Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx): 1. Scaling and Statistical Properties of Sea‐Ice Deformation Fields
Abstract
As the sea‐ice modeling community is shifting to advanced numerical frameworks, developing new sea‐ice rheologies, and increasing model spatial resolution, ubiquitous deformation features in the Arctic sea ice are now being resolved by sea‐ice models. Initiated at the Forum for Arctic Modeling and Observational Synthesis, the Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx) aims at evaluating state‐of‐the‐art sea‐ice models using existing and new metrics to understand how the simulated deformation fields are affected by different representations of sea‐ice physics (rheology) and by model configuration. Part 1 of the SIREx analysis is concerned with evaluation of the statistical distribution and scaling properties of sea‐ice deformation fields from 35 different simulations against those from the RADARSAT Geophysical Processor System (RGPS). For the first time, the viscous‐plastic (and the elastic‐viscous‐plastic variant), elastic‐anisotropic‐plastic, and Maxwell‐elasto‐brittle rheologies are compared in a single study. We find that both plastic and brittle sea‐ice rheologies have the potential to reproduce the observed RGPS deformation statistics, including multi‐fractality. Model configuration (e.g., numerical convergence, atmospheric representation, spatial resolution) and physical parameterizations (e.g., ice strength parameters and ice thickness distribution) both have effects as important as the choice of sea‐ice rheology on the deformation statistics. It is therefore not straightforward to attribute model performance to a specific rheological framework using current deformation metrics. In light of these results, we further evaluate the statistical properties of simulated Linear Kinematic Features in a SIREx Part 2 companion paper.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1029/2021jc017667
Entities
People
- Amélie Bouchat
- Bruno Tremblay
- Camille Lique
- Claude Talandier
- Dmitry Dukhovskoy
- Einar Ólason
- Frédéric Dupont
- Gilles Garric
- Jean‐François Lemieux
- Jérôme Chanut
- Martin Losch
- Nils Hutter
- Paul G. Myers
- Pierre Rampal
- Qiang Wang
- Till Rasmussen
- Wiesław Masłowski
- Younjoo Lee
Organizations
- Danish Meteorological Institute
- Florida State University
- McGill University
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
- Naval Postgraduate School
- University of Alberta
- University of Western Brittany