The large heat and moisture release from Arctic leads, particularly in winter, results in atmospheric convection above and downwind of the leads. We have developed a two-dimensional high-resolution deep anelastic lead-resolving numerical model to investigate the atmospheric response from freezing leads. A second-order turbulence closure scheme is used to parameterize the atmospheric turbulence in the horizontally inhomogeneous system. The surface fluxes which drive the convection, are obtained from a new physically based model by applying the surface renewal theory to the air-sea interface. The surface flux model accounts for the fetch-limitation of the airflow over the lead and allows the surface to freeze as a result of the significant heat loss from the lead surface. This study focuses on the atmospheric convective circulations induced by freezing leads. The model is used to study the effect of varying lead widths and ambient atmospheric conditions on the time evolution and dissipation of the convection from freezing leads