Improving Arctic Sea Ice Edge Forecasts by Assimilating High Horizontal Resolution Sea Ice Concentration Data into the US Navy's Ice Forecast Systems

Abstract

This study presents the improvement in ice edge error within the US Navy's operational sea ice forecast systems gained by assimilating high horizontal resolution satellite-derived ice concentration products. Since the late 1980's, the ice forecast systems have assimilated near realtime sea ice concentration derived from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor Microwave/ Imager (SSMI and then SSMIS). The resolution of the satellite-derived product was approximately the same as the previous operational ice forecast system (25 km). As the sea ice forecast model resolution increased over time, the need for higher horizontal resolution observational data grew. In 2013, a new Navy sea ice forecast system (Arctic Cap Nowcast/Forecast System - ACNFS) went into operations with a horizontal resolution of _3.5 km at the North Pole. A method of blending ice concentration observations from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR2) along with a sea ice mask produced by the National Ice Center (NIC) has been developed, resulting in an ice concentration product with very high spatial resolution. In this study, ACNFS was initialized with this newly developed high resolution blended ice concentration product. The daily ice edge locations from model hindcast simulations were compared against independent observed ice edge locations. ACNFS initialized using the high resolution blended ice concentration data product decreased predicted ice edge location error compared to the operational system that only assimilated SSMIS data. A second evaluation assimilating the new blended sea ice concentration product into the pre-operational Navy Global Ocean Forecast System 3.1 also showed a substantial improvement in ice edge location over a system using the SSMIS sea ice concentration product alone.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 13, 2016
Accession Number
AD1004224

Entities

People

  • Alan J. Wallcraft
  • D. A. Hebert
  • Edward Joseph Metzger
  • F. Fetterer
  • J. S. Stewart
  • M. W. Phelps
  • Ole Martin Smedstad
  • Pamela G. Posey
  • R. A. Allard
  • S. R. Helfrich
  • W. N. Meier

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Beaufort Sea
  • Data Centers
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Geography
  • High Resolution
  • Meteorological Satellites
  • Microwave Detectors
  • Observation
  • Oceans
  • Open Water
  • Regions
  • Remote Sensing
  • Satellite Imaging
  • Sea Ice
  • Synthetic Aperture Radar
  • Water

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Atmospheric Remote Sensing.
  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers
  • Polar and Arctic Studies

Technology Areas

  • Space