Evaluation of Arctic Sea-ice Cover and Thickness Simulated by MITgcm

A regional Arctic Ocean configuration of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology General Circulation Model(MITgcm) is applied to simulate the Arctic sea ice from 1991 to 2012. The simulations are evaluated by comparing them with observations from different sources. The results show that MITgcm can reproduce the interannual and seasonal variability of the sea-ice extent, but underestimates the trend in sea-ice extent, especially in September. The ice concentration and thickness distributions are comparable to those from the observations, with most deviations within the observational uncertainties and less than 0.5 m, respectively. The simulated sea-ice extents are better correlated with observations in September, with a correlation coefficient of 0.95, than in March, with a correlation coefficient of 0.83.However, the distributions of sea-ice concentration are better simulated in March, with higher pattern correlation coefficients(0.98) than in September. When the model underestimates the atmospheric influence on the sea-ice evolution in March, deviations in the sea-ice concentration arise at the ice edges and are higher than those in September. In contrast,when the model underestimates the oceanic boundaries’ influence on the September sea-ice evolution, disagreements in the distribution of the sea-ice concentration and its trend are found over most marginal seas in the Arctic Ocean. The uncertainties of the model, whereby it fails to incorporate the atmospheric information in March and oceanic information in September, contribute to varying model errors with the seasons.