Stress and strain-rate comparisons between observed in situ buoy arrays and ice models

The modeled material behavior of sea ice traditionally assumes some form of elastic/viscous/plastic rheology. To date, however, this assumption has never been validated against observed measurements at the scale of the assumptions. Using an archive of in situ stress buoys with GPS positioning from Beaufort Sea ice campaigns in 1993, 1998, 2001, and 2007, we present a comparison between the observed stress and strain-rate archive and the Los Alamos CICE model version 3. The formulation of observations in a format compatible with model output and preliminary comparisons with the CICE model will be shown.