Improving Arctic sea ice edge forecasts by assimilating high resolution VIIRS sea ice concentration data into the U.S. Navy's ice forecast system
Abstract
This study presents the improvement in ice edge error within the U.S. Navy's operational sea ice forecast system gained by assimilating the high horizontal resolution visible/infrared satellite-derived VIIRS ice concentration products. A series of hindcast studies are performed for the period of 1 January - 31 December 2016 using Global Ocean Forecast System (GOFS 3.1), a 1/12° HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) that is two-way coupled to the Community Ice CodE (CICE) in a daily update cycle with the Navy Coupled Ocean Data Assimilation (NCODA). Comparisons using the VIIRS ice concentration products (< 1km resolution) show lower ice edge location errors than the current system, which assimilates near real-time passive microwave data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSMIS) and the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR2) ice concentration products (25 and 12.5km resolution, respectively). The daily ice edge locations from the model simulations are compared against independent observed ice edge locations. Results from the Pan-Arctic and regional areas along with seasonal time scales will be presented. A previous study using the Arctic Cap Nowcast/Forecast System (ACNFS), a 1/12° coupled HYCOM/CICE/NCODA for the Northern Hemisphere only, has shown that by assimilating the VIIRS (along with SSMIS and AMSR2) ice concentration products reduced the ice edge location errors by 25% in the pan-Arctic region for the same year-long time period.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.C21G1184P
- Keywords:
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- 0750 Sea ice;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4207 Arctic and Antarctic oceanography;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL;
- 4262 Ocean observing systems;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL