null
(Ed.)
Abstract. Ocean–sea-ice coupled models constrained by various observations provide different ice thickness estimates in the Antarctic. We evaluatecontemporary monthly ice thickness from four reanalyses in the Weddell Sea: the German contribution of the project Estimating the Circulation and Climate ofthe Ocean Version 2 (GECCO2), the Southern Ocean State Estimate (SOSE), the Ensemble Kalman Filter system based on the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO-EnKF) and the Global Ice–Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (GIOMAS). The evaluation is performed againstreference satellite and in situ observations from ICESat-1, Envisat, upward-looking sonars and visual ship-based sea-ice observations. Compared withICESat-1, NEMO-EnKF has the highest correlation coefficient (CC) of 0.54 and lowest root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.44 m. Compared within situ observations, SOSE has the highest CC of 0.77 and lowest RMSE of 0.72 m. All reanalyses underestimate ice thickness near the coast ofthe western Weddell Sea with respect to ICESat-1 and in situ observations even though these observational estimates may be biased low. GECCO2 andNEMO-EnKF reproduce the seasonal variation in first-year ice thickness reasonably well in the eastern Weddell Sea. In contrast, GIOMAS ice thicknessperforms best in the central Weddell Sea, while SOSE ice thickness agrees most with the observations from the southern coast of the Weddell Sea. Inaddition, only NEMO-EnKF can reproduce the seasonal evolution of the large-scale spatial distribution of ice thickness, characterized by the thickice shifting from the southwestern and western Weddell Sea in summer to the western and northwestern Weddell Sea in spring. We infer that the thickice distribution is correlated with its better simulation of northward ice motion in the western Weddell Sea. These results demonstrate thepossibilities and limitations of using current sea-ice reanalysis for understanding the recent variability of sea-ice volume in the Antarctic.
more »
« less
