Advances in Earth Science ›› 2009, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (5): 538-548. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2009.05.0538

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A Modeling of Bering Sea Polynyas and Analysis of Key Factors Impacting Simulation Accuracy

Fu Hongli, Zhao Jinping   

  1. Ocean University of China,Key Laboratory of Polar Oceanography and Global Ocean Change,Qingdao  266100,China
  • Received:2009-02-04 Revised:2009-04-08 Online:2009-05-10 Published:2009-05-10

Fu Hongli, Zhao Jinping. A Modeling of Bering Sea Polynyas and Analysis of Key Factors Impacting Simulation Accuracy[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2009, 24(5): 538-548.

     In winter, a lot of latent polynyas appear regularly in the shelf of Northern Bering Sea. They have made great contributions to local ecological system and the Arctic halocline. A Los Alamos Sea Ice Model (CICE) with a horizontal resolution of 6.37 km has been implemented to simulate a full year of sea-ice growth and decay starting on November 1, 2002 in the Bering Sea. The total sea ice area from the model results and one from AMSR-E/Aqua satellite observations has a good consistency. Their correlation coefficient of daily mean total sea ice area equals to 0.97 during the modeling period. Model results show that polynyas in southern domains of east-west coasts are formed by means of southward movements of sea ice, which are mainly forced by offshore northeast wind. So the CICE allows us to reproduce some key dynamic processes of latent polynyas opening and closing events during January-April 2003. For the satellite observation data, polynyas are defined as regions covered by <75% sea ice concentration and for model results we use <70% sea ice concentration as polynyas criterion. Accordingly formation processes of polynyas are discussed in four districts of the Bearing Sea. Comparing with satellite data, most polynyas are very well simulated. The article profoundly discusses key factors, which impact simulation accuracy of polynyas. It is concluded that selecting suitable threshold and increasing the spatial and temporal resolution of atmospheric forcing are very favorable to improving the simulation precision. We need to use a general ocean model coupled to the sea ice model to solve the problem of deviations of some polynyas.

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