Andrew Roberts, Alexandra Jahn, Adrian Turner (Early Adopters)
Los Alamos National Laboratory; University of Colorado at Boulder; Los Alamos National Laboratory
Applied Research Topic:
An ICESat-2 emulator for the Los Alamos sea ice model (CICE) to evaluate DOE, NCAR, and DOD sea ice predictions for the Arctic.
Potential Applications:
Sea ice forecasting; national defense environmental forecasting; coordinated disaster response: oil spill mitigation, field campaigns; improved climate projections at all latitudes
Abstract:
This project will develop an ICESat-2 emulator for the Los Alamos Sea Ice Model (CICE) to facilitate detailed comparisons between measured and modeled sea ice freeboard in Earth System Models, including in the Regional Arctic System Model (RASM) and Community Earth System Model (CESM). The purpose of this emulator is to sample simulated sea ice freeboard and snow cover in a comparable way to the method used to measure real sea ice and snow cover by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) aboard ICESat-2.
Currently, Earth System Models (ESMs) generate sea ice state statistics, such as concentration, thickness and snow cover, differently from the way ATLAS will sample them in the real world. Whereas ATLAS will sample sea ice freeboard in three pairs of strong/weak tracks, each pair separated by 3km, and each strong/weak track separated by 90m, ESMs generate mean sea ice and snow thickness statistics by sampling all model grid cells at all time steps. These different sampling regimes will make detailed ESM evaluation difficult with ICESat-2 measurements, since average seasonal sea ice freeboard and snow products generated from ATLAS data will not be directly comparable with modeled ice mass averages. This project will address the problem by creating an ICESat-2 emulator in CICE that samples modeled sea ice freeboard and snow cover at the same time of the day and in the same proximity as ATLAS measurements. In so doing, this limits the problem, for example, that ATLAS will sample locations closer to the poles more frequently than lower latitude Arctic locations, whereas standard models statistics will not. CICE is widely used for numerical sea ice predictions spanning short-term (7 day) forecasts to centennial sea ice projections.
As part of this project, we will create tools to quickly compare CICE freeboard track data with ATLAS measurements, which will improve the ability to evaluate model skill and uncertainty in a large collection of models that use CICE, including RASM, CESM, the U.S. Department of Energy's Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS), and the U.S. Navy's ice forecasting system. The ICESat-2 emulator will be released publicly as a module within CICE, and will be tested in collaboration with the primary end users within the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and research universities engaged in Earth System Modeling.
SDT Member Partner:
End Users:
U.S. Department of Energy (POC: Elizabeth Hunke); National Center for Atmospheric Research (POC: Marika Holland, Jennifer Kay); U.S. Department of Defense (POC: Wieslaw Maslowski, Ruth Preller); University of Colorado Boulder (POC: John Cassano)
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