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Atmospheric Circulation and Its Effect on Arctic Sea Ice in CCSM3 Simulations at Medium and High Resolution*

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Atmospheric Circulation and Its Effect on Arctic Sea Ice in CCSM3 Simulations at Medium and High Resolution* 1JUNE 2006 DEWEAVER AND BITZ 2415 Atmospheric Circulation and Its Effect on Arctic Sea Ice in CCSM3 Simulations at Medium and High Resolution* ERIC DEWEAVER AND CECILIA M. BITZ Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin (Manuscript received 24 January 2005, in final form 30 August 2005) ABSTRACT The simulation of Arctic sea ice and surface winds changes significantly when Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3) resolution is increased from T42 (ϳ2.8°) to T85 (ϳ1.4°). At T42 reso- lution, Arctic sea ice is too thick off the Siberian coast and too thin along the Canadian coast. Both of these biases are reduced at T85 resolution. The most prominent surface wind difference is the erroneous North Polar summer anticyclone, present at T42 but absent at T85. An offline sea ice model is used to study the effect of the surface winds on sea ice thickness. In this model, the surface wind stress is prescribed alternately from reanalysis and the T42 and T85 simulations. In the offline model, CCSM3 surface wind biases have a dramatic effect on sea ice distribution: with reanalysis surface winds annual-mean ice thickness is greatest along the Canadian coast, but with CCSM3 winds thickness is greater on the Siberian side. A significant difference between the two CCSM3-forced offline simulations is the thickness of the ice along the Canadian archipelago, where the T85 winds produce thicker ice than their T42 counterparts. Seasonal forcing experiments, with CCSM3 winds during spring and summer and reanalysis winds in fall and winter, relate the Canadian thickness difference to spring and summer surface wind differences. These experiments also show that the ice buildup on the Siberian coast at both resolutions is related to the fall and winter surface winds. The Arctic atmospheric circulation is examined further through comparisons of the winter sea level pressure (SLP) and eddy geopotential height. At both resolutions the simulated Beaufort high is quite weak, weaker at higher resolution. Eddy heights show that the wintertime Beaufort high in reanalysis has a barotropic vertical structure. In contrast, high CCSM3 SLP in Arctic winter is found in association with cold lower-tropospheric temperatures and a baroclinic vertical structure. In reanalysis, the summertime Arctic surface circulation is dominated by a polar cyclone, which is accompanied by surface inflow and a deep Ferrel cell north of the traditional polar cell. The Arctic Ferrel cell is accompanied by a northward flux of zonal momentum and a polar lobe of the zonal-mean jet. These features do not appear in the CCSM3 simulations at either resolution. 1. Introduction plification of global warming than those with thicker ice. This finding is in keeping with earlier studies (e.g., With its triple role as shortwave optical reflector, references cited in Houghton et al. 2001), which show a air–sea flux barrier, and freshwater transporter, Arctic prominent role for sea ice in setting the climate sensi- sea ice plays a key role in simulations of anthropogenic tivity of the Arctic and even the globe as a whole (Rind climate change. As a recent example, Holland and Bitz et al. 1995). But accurate sea ice simulation is hard to (2003) found that climate models with relatively thin achieve, since ice evolves through complex interactions sea ice showed more Northern Hemisphere polar am- of mixed-phase saline thermodynamics, radiative trans- fer, and rheology. Moreover, even a perfect sea ice * Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin— model will generate errors given a poor simulation of Madison, Contribution Number 905. the overlying atmosphere. In particular, the spatial pat- tern of sea ice thickness is largely determined by sur- face winds. Corresponding author address: Dr. Eric DeWeaver, Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin— While possibly less mysterious than the sea ice, the Madison, 1225 West Dayton Avenue, Madison, WI 53706. Arctic surface winds are also poorly understood, and E-mail: [email protected] current climate models have difficulty in reliably simu- © 2006 American Meteorological Society JCLI3753 2416 JOURNAL OF CLIMATE VOLUME 19 lating them. In a study of several simulations from the of, say, the eddy geopotential height at 1000 and 700 mb Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP; (section 5). Attempts to account for the climatological Gates 1992), Bitz et al. (2002) found a high bias in stationary waves usually involve consideration of the wintertime sea level pressure (SLP) off the central Si- strength of the zonal-mean flow, diabatic heating in berian coast, with an accompanying anticyclonic bias in storm tracks and in the Tropics, vorticity flux by tran- geostrophic surface winds. In an offline sea ice model, sients, and stationary nonlinear interactions. Held et al. they found that the wind bias produced a sea ice pattern (2002) present evidence that the wintertime stationary with maximum thickness along the Siberian coast, dia- waves in high latitudes—including the Beaufort high— metrically opposed to the Canadian-side pileup ex- depend on the interaction of tropical heating with mid- pected from observations. Weatherly et al. (1998) latitude mountains (their Fig. 11). A better understand- found a high bias in annual-mean SLP over the Beau- ing of these dynamics could be helpful in understanding fort Sea in the National Center for Atmospheric Re- why the Beaufort high is often distorted in GCMs. In search (NCAR) Climate System Model (CSM), a pre- contrast to the wintertime circulation, the observed cursor to the Community Climate System Model, ver- summer circulation of the Arctic is much more zonally sion 3 (CCSM3) with simpler sea ice dynamics. The symmetric, dominated by a polar low and flanked by associated surface winds forced a sea ice pattern with the storm track of the Arctic front (e.g., Serreze et al. maximum thickness against the Bering Strait, a 90° ro- 2001; Serreze and Barry 1988; Reed and Kunkel 1960). tation from the expected Canadian thickness maxi- The ability of a model to correctly simulate the winter- mum. A study of an earlier generation of climate mod- time Arctic circulation features may thus be quite in- els by Walsh and Crane (1992) also found substantial dependent of its ability to simulate the summertime errors in Arctic SLP, with seasonal pattern correlation flow. coefficients between observed and simulated climato- Motivated by the difficulty and importance of accu- logical SLP ranging from 0.9 to 0.17. rate sea ice simulation, the present study has three Previous studies have argued that wind-induced goals: 1) to identify the biases in Arctic basin surface thickness errors derive from errors in the position and winds and sea ice thickness in the NCAR CCSM3, 2) to strength of the wintertime (December–February; DJF) examine in detail the seasonally varying forcing of the Beaufort high (Bitz et al. 2002; Weatherly et al. 1998). sea ice thickness distribution by the surface winds, and Yet models also have severe errors in summer surface 3) to relate the basin-scale surface wind biases to the circulation (Bitz et al. 2002; Briegleb and Bromwich large-scale CCSM3 atmospheric circulation. Our ex- 1998), which could be quite detrimental to sea ice thick- amination considers sea ice and circulation differences ness. Some support for a summer influence can be in- between two control runs of CCSM3, one at relatively ferred from analysis of observations by Rigor et al. high (T85) resolution and one at a medium (T42) reso- (2002), who found that decadal SLP changes in the lution (see section 2 for specifications). summer and winter seasons were accompanied by com- Although neither resolution produces an entirely sat- parable changes in sea ice motion. They noted that isfactory simulation of Arctic sea ice thickness, some while the summer SLP change is smaller, the internal improvement is evident at the higher resolution, as dis- stress of the ice is also less for the thinner summer ice, cussed in section 3. Are these improvements in sea ice so that the ice becomes more sensitive to wind stress as thickness due to genuine improvements in surface the surface winds slacken. The enhanced sensitivity of winds? If so, what are the most relevant improvements? the summertime sea ice was also invoked by Serreze et We examine the surface winds at the two resolutions to al. (1989), who argued for a 20% reduction in ice con- address these questions. We also use an offline sea ice centration in the Canada Basin following extended pe- model to isolate the mechanical effect of surface winds riods of cyclonic summertime surface winds. The sum- on the sea ice distribution. In the offline simulations, mer sensitivity was quantified by Thorndyke and the surface stress on the top of the ice is calculated Colony (1982), who found that, for geostrophic surface either from reanalysis or CCSM3 surface winds, but all winds of the same strength, the response in sea ice mo- other forcings (e.g., air–ice fluxes of latent and sensible tion was stronger in summer than in winter by a ratio of heat) are computed from observational datasets (de- 11 to 8. tails in section 2c). Our interest in the seasonality of the surface wind The remainder of this paper is divided into six sec- errors comes in large part from our desire to link Arctic tions. Section 2 discusses the model integrations and surface wind forcing of sea ice to the large-scale general reanalysis datasets used in the study, and describes the circulation. The wintertime Beaufort high can be re- offline sea ice model that we use to assess the effects of garded as a stationary wave, clearly apparent in plots spring and summer surface wind biases on sea ice thick- 1JUNE 2006 DEWEAVER AND BITZ 2417 ness.
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