The Future of Sea Ice Modeling: Where Do We Go from Here?
Résumé
Earth system models (ESMs) include a sea ice component to physically represent sea ice changes and impacts on planetary albedo and ocean circulation (Manabe and Stouffer 1980). Most contemporary sea ice models describe the sea ice pack as a continuum material, a principle laid by the Arctic Ice Dynamics Joint Experiment (AIDJEX) group in the 1970s (Pritchard 1980). Initially intended for climate studies, the sea ice components in ESMs are now used across a wide range of resolutions, including very high resolutions more than 100 times finer than those they were designed for, in an increasingly wide range of applications that challenge the AIDJEX model foundations (Coon et al. 2007), including operational weather and marine forecasts. It is therefore sensible to question the applicability of contemporary sea ice models to these applications. Are there better alternatives available? Large advances in high-performance computing (HPC) have been made over the last few decades and this trend will continue. What constraints and opportunities will these HPC changes provide for contemporary sea ice models? Can continuum models scale well for use in exascale computing?
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