The Climate extension of the Weather Research and Forecasting model (CWRF) is being coupled with the Los Alamos Sea Ice Model (CICE) to simulate sea ice and climate variations over the Arctic region. This study presents the development of the coupling and its preliminary results. For the purpose of evaluation and initialization, the CICE is run in a standalone mode over an extended Arctic domain at 50 km grid spacing. The NCEP-DOE AMIP II reanalysis during 1981-1985 are used to drive the CICE. Initial results show that the CICE captures the basic spatial distributions and temporal variations of Arctic sea ice cover. The major model bias is overestimation during the transition seasons, which may be resulted from cold temperature biases in the reanalysis. Satellite underestimates of the sea ice and the lack of surface atmosphere interactions in the standalone mode may also contribute to the bias. Further diagnostics of the model bias is on-going. The coupled CWRF-CICE integration will facilitate the study on how the downscaling improves the representation of the regional circulation and surface energy budget, and hence local sea ice and climate changes over the Arctic region. This development will contribute to the Arctic System Reanalysis.