Antarctic Sea Ice Thickness
Antarctic sea ice is an important feature of the global climate system because it is a sensitive indicator of climate change and plays a complex role in global climatic and oceanographic processes. Heat transfer within the sea-ice zone is primarily an open water phenomenon and the distributions of thin ice, leads, and polynyas have important implications upon the regional energy balance (King and Turner 1997). Although sea ice greatly affects the exchange of long- and short-wave energy between the ocean and the atmosphere within the polar regions it remains poorly represented in global circulation models. (Allison 1997, Holland et al. 2001).
NIC Operational Sea Ice Charts:
Since 1973, the National Ice Center (NIC) has produced weekly charts on sea ice conditions for the Southern Ocean from remotely sensed data. Originally intended for navigation through ice covered waters, these charts also contain valuable scientific information, specifically, long-term, continental scale information on sea-ice concentration, type (a proxy for ice thickness), and/or form (Dedrick et al. 200).
Modeling Antarctic Sea Ice Thickness with CCSM 3.0:
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate System Model (CCSM3.0) is a coupled climate model with dynamic and data-driven versions of atmosphere, land, ocean, and sea-ice components. The NIC data can be used with this model as input by replacing the ice fraction information provided by NCAR in the data ice model (dice6) with gridded ice fraction information extracted from the NIC ice charts. Thickness estimates derived from the NIC ice charts may be used to evaluate sea ice thickness estimates produced by both coupled and uncoupled CCSM component simulations.
Questions/Comments: bigmar@udel.edu
Mary Lemcke, Department of Geography, University of Delaware