Limited Benefits of Increased Spatial Resolution for Sea Ice in HighResMIP Simulations
Abstract State‐of‐the‐art coupled climate models struggle to accurately simulate historical variability and trends of Antarctic sea ice, impacting their reliability for future projections. Increasing horizontal resolution is expected to improve the representation of coupled atmosphere‐ice‐ocean proc...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Wiley
2024-07-01
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| Series: | Geophysical Research Letters |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL107969 |
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| author | J. Selivanova D. Iovino M. Vichi |
| author_facet | J. Selivanova D. Iovino M. Vichi |
| author_sort | J. Selivanova |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract State‐of‐the‐art coupled climate models struggle to accurately simulate historical variability and trends of Antarctic sea ice, impacting their reliability for future projections. Increasing horizontal resolution is expected to improve the representation of coupled atmosphere‐ice‐ocean processes at high latitudes. Here, we examine the historical changes in the Antarctic sea ice area and volume in High Resolution Model Intercomparison Project simulations against satellite data sets and ocean reanalyzes to assess the benefits of increased spatial resolution. Our results do not show considerable benefits when horizontal resolutions up to 0.25° in the ocean and 25 km in the atmosphere. Limited improvements are reported in the simulated historical sea ice trends, which are nevertheless model‐dependent, and associated with the use of model components with more complex sea‐ice parameterizations. Given the high computational cost of climate‐scale simulations at high spatial resolution, we advocate prioritizing enhancements in sea‐ice physics and the interactions among model components in coupled climate simulations. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-c42fb2187f004bcba510407757c7bc83 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 0094-8276 1944-8007 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-07-01 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Geophysical Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj-art-c42fb2187f004bcba510407757c7bc832025-08-20T03:10:25ZengWileyGeophysical Research Letters0094-82761944-80072024-07-015114n/an/a10.1029/2023GL107969Limited Benefits of Increased Spatial Resolution for Sea Ice in HighResMIP SimulationsJ. Selivanova0D. Iovino1M. Vichi2CMCC Foundation ‐ Euro‐Mediterranean Center on Climate Change Bologna ItalyCMCC Foundation ‐ Euro‐Mediterranean Center on Climate Change Bologna ItalyDepartment of Oceanography University of Cape Town Rondebosch South AfricaAbstract State‐of‐the‐art coupled climate models struggle to accurately simulate historical variability and trends of Antarctic sea ice, impacting their reliability for future projections. Increasing horizontal resolution is expected to improve the representation of coupled atmosphere‐ice‐ocean processes at high latitudes. Here, we examine the historical changes in the Antarctic sea ice area and volume in High Resolution Model Intercomparison Project simulations against satellite data sets and ocean reanalyzes to assess the benefits of increased spatial resolution. Our results do not show considerable benefits when horizontal resolutions up to 0.25° in the ocean and 25 km in the atmosphere. Limited improvements are reported in the simulated historical sea ice trends, which are nevertheless model‐dependent, and associated with the use of model components with more complex sea‐ice parameterizations. Given the high computational cost of climate‐scale simulations at high spatial resolution, we advocate prioritizing enhancements in sea‐ice physics and the interactions among model components in coupled climate simulations.https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL107969Sea icecoupled climate modelsHighResMIPAntarcticmodel resolution |
| spellingShingle | J. Selivanova D. Iovino M. Vichi Limited Benefits of Increased Spatial Resolution for Sea Ice in HighResMIP Simulations Geophysical Research Letters Sea ice coupled climate models HighResMIP Antarctic model resolution |
| title | Limited Benefits of Increased Spatial Resolution for Sea Ice in HighResMIP Simulations |
| title_full | Limited Benefits of Increased Spatial Resolution for Sea Ice in HighResMIP Simulations |
| title_fullStr | Limited Benefits of Increased Spatial Resolution for Sea Ice in HighResMIP Simulations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Limited Benefits of Increased Spatial Resolution for Sea Ice in HighResMIP Simulations |
| title_short | Limited Benefits of Increased Spatial Resolution for Sea Ice in HighResMIP Simulations |
| title_sort | limited benefits of increased spatial resolution for sea ice in highresmip simulations |
| topic | Sea ice coupled climate models HighResMIP Antarctic model resolution |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL107969 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT jselivanova limitedbenefitsofincreasedspatialresolutionforseaiceinhighresmipsimulations AT diovino limitedbenefitsofincreasedspatialresolutionforseaiceinhighresmipsimulations AT mvichi limitedbenefitsofincreasedspatialresolutionforseaiceinhighresmipsimulations |