The impact of modelling the sea ice thickness distribution in a coupled climate model

The thickness of sea ice can vary greatly from being centimetres thick (young ice) to being up to tens of metres thick (in pressure ridges). Many sea ice properties and atmosphere-sea ice-ocean interactions which affect the climate, are dependent on the ice thickness. Therefore, it is important to simulate the distribution of ice thicknesses in climate models.

Preliminary results are presented from the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 1 (HadGEM1). In HadGEM1, multiple thickness categories are used to capture the ice thickness distribution within a grid cell. A linear remapping scheme is used to calculate the change in the ice thickness distribution due to thermodynamic growth and melting. To assess the impact of modelling the ice thickness distribution, the results are compared to a model run which contains only a single ice thickness category.