Sea ice data assimilation for the Canadian east coast
Date
Author
Institution
Degree Level
Degree
Department
Supervisor / Co-Supervisor and Their Department(s)
Examining Committee Member(s) and Their Department(s)
Citation for Previous Publication
Link to Related Item
Abstract
The sea ice fields produced by the NEMO sea ice/ocean coupled model’s prognostic simulation drift from reality in the Labrador sea. Thus four additional data assimilation experiments were conducted in order to obtain satisfactory sea ice fields. In the first two experiments the model’s sea ice concentration was pushed towards Canadian Ice Service fields using nudging. In the third and fourth experiment as the sea ice concentration was nudged, the sea ice thickness and the underlying ocean salinity and temperature are corrected, based on correlations between the sea ice concentration and the model tracers. It was found that the simple nudging experiments produced sea ice fields close to reality. The experiments where corrections are applied to the underlying ocean salinity and temperature, produced sea ice concentration fields closer to the reality than the nudging experiment, by achieving a balance between the sea ice and the ocean fields.