Advancing understanding of Arctic sea ice and weather interactions to improve forecasts on day-to-month timescales
Abstract
Funds are provided for research to better understand and predict Arctic weather and its interaction with sea ice on day-to-month timescales, especially the extreme storms that have driven major sea ice break-up and caused large waves and severe coastal erosion in summer and fall. A fraction of Arctic surface cyclones is linked to troposphere polar vortices (TPVs). These TPV-linked surface cyclones are potentially important for prolonging sea ice predictability because TPVs may persist for up to a month prior to the surface cyclone.We aim to investigate the extent to which intense cyclones are predictable, both cyclones related to TPVs and others that are not. This project also seeks to determine how sea ice conditions, especially those in the marginal ice zone, set the stage for such events and to quantify the effect of such storms on the sea ice break-up, divergence, melt and fall freeze-up.We propose to conduct a series of predictability simulations using an Earth system prediction model that has multi-scale resolution in the atmosphere, with finer Arctic resolution Arctic to capture scales that are important to cyclone evolution. The model will employ nudging in the atmosphere component to constrain the atmosphere to recent observed conditions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 05, 2021
- Source ID
- N000142112490
Entities
People
- Cecilia M. Bitz
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Washington