Characteristics of Arctic sea-ice thickness variability in GCMs

Abstract

Skillful Arctic sea ice forecasts may be possible for lead times of months or even years owing to the persistence of thickness anomalies. In this study sea ice thickness variability is characterized in fully coupled GCMs and sea ice-ocean-only models (IOMs) that are forced with an estimate of observations derived from atmospheric reanalysis and satellite measurements. Overall, variance in sea ice thickness is greatest along Arctic Ocean coastlines. Sea ice thickness anomalies have a typical time scale of about 6-20 months, a time scale that lengthens about a season when accounting for ice transport, and a typical length scale of about 500-1000 km. The range of these scales across GCMs implies that an estimate of the number of thickness monitoring locations needed to characterize the full Arctic basin sea ice thickness variability field is model dependent and would vary between 3 and 14. Models with a thinner mean ice state tend to have ice-thickness anomalies that are generally shorter lived and smaller in amplitude but have larger spatial scales. Additionally, sea ice thickness variability in IOMs is damped relative to GCMs in part due to strong negative coupling between the dynamic and thermodynamic processes that affect sea ice thickness. The significance for designing prediction systems is discussed.