Modeling ocean and sea ice dynamics of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Aspects of forcing


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Jens.Schroeter [ at ] awi.de

Abstract

The Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) is one of the main pathways for freshwater exiting the Arctic Ocean. Freshwater exported to the North Atlantic may influence the deep water formation in the Labrador Sea, and thus the meridional overturning circulation. Modeling ocean and sea ice conditions of the CAA is difficult because of narrow straits and complex coastlines. The Finite-Element Sea-ice Ocean circulation Model (FESOM) configured on a global mesh is applied to assess the volume, freshwater and sea ice transports through the CAA.With a mesh resolution of 5 km in the CAA we are able to accurately resolve complex coastlines. Outside the CAA the mesh is refined to 24 km north of 55N with a global background resolution of 1.5degrees. In this study, first, it is shown that the transports modeled with FESOM correlate well with the available observational data. Second, the model is used to learn about the impact of different atmospheric forcing datasets differing in spatial and temporal resolution (CORE 2 and the Reforecast dataset from Environment Canada). The CORE 2 dataset is on the T62 grid, which is coarse compared to the Reforecast dataset with grid resolution of 0.45degrees longitude and 0.3degrees latitude. The temporal resolution of the Reforecast dataset is higher than the CORE 2 dataset (one hourly and 6-hourly data, respectively, for wind, surface temperature and specific humidity fields). The representation of sea ice in the CAA can be improved by using the high resolution atmospheric forcing.



Item Type
Conference (Poster)
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Primary Division
Programs
Primary Topic
Research Networks
Publication Status
Published
Event Details
European Geosciences Union General Assembly, 01 Apr 2013 - 01 Jan 1970, Vienna.
Eprint ID
33772
Cite as
Wekerle, C. , Wang, Q. , Danilov, S. , Myers, P. G. , Jung, T. and Schröter, J. (2013): Modeling ocean and sea ice dynamics of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Aspects of forcing , European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Vienna, April 2013 - unspecified .


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