Identification

Title

Sea ice enhancements to Polar WRF

Abstract

The Polar Weather Research and Forecasting Model (Polar WRF), a polar-optimized version of the WRF Model, is developed and made available to the community by Ohio State University's Polar Meteorology Group (PMG) as a code supplement to the WRF release from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). While annual NCAR official releases contain polar modifications, the PMG provides very recent updates to users. PMG supplement versions up to WRF version 3.4 include modified Noah land surface model sea ice representation, allowing the specification of variable sea ice thickness and snow depth over sea ice rather than the default 3-m thickness and 0.05-m snow depth. Starting with WRF V3.5, these options are implemented by NCAR into the standard WRF release. Gridded distributions of Arctic ice thickness and snow depth over sea ice have recently become available. Their impacts are tested with PMG's WRF V3.5-based Polar WRF in two case studies. First, 20-km-resolution model results for January 1998 are compared with observations during the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean project. Polar WRF using analyzed thickness and snow depth fields appears to simulate January 1998 slightly better than WRF without polar settings selected. Sensitivity tests show that the simulated impacts of realistic variability in sea ice thickness and snow depth on near-surface temperature is several degrees. The 40-km resolution simulations of a second case study covering Europe and the Arctic Ocean demonstrate remote impacts of Arctic sea ice thickness on midlatitude synoptic meteorology that develop within 2 weeks during a winter 2012 blocking event.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7p2709q

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-06-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

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name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2015 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact