Satellite-retrieved sea ice concentration uncertainty and its effect on modelling wave evolution in marginal ice zones

Nose, Takehiko; Waseda, Takuji; Kodaira, Tsubasa; Inoue, Jun

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-2029-2020

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-2029-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-2029-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

Research article

|

24 Jun 2020

Research article |

| 24 Jun 2020

Satellite-retrieved sea ice concentration uncertainty and its effect on modelling wave evolution in marginal ice zones

Takehiko Nose, Takuji Waseda, Tsubasa Kodaira, and Jun Inoue

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Final revised paper (published on 24 Jun 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 02 Dec 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of: Satellite retrieved sea ice concentration uncertainty and its effect on modelling wave evolution in marginal ice zones', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Dec 2019
- AC1: 'Author response to tc-2019-285-RC1', Takehiko Nose, 25 Feb 2020
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 16 Jan 2020
- AC2: 'Author response to tc-2019-285-RC2', Takehiko Nose, 25 Feb 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (05 Mar 2020) by David Schroeder

AR by Takehiko Nose on behalf of the Authors (08 Mar 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Mar 2020) by David Schroeder

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (21 Mar 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (27 Mar 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I am generally satisfied with the authors’ responses to my first review. I am supportive of the decision to modify the original Sec. 3. My comments on the second submission mostly relate to presentation. I still find the manuscript unclear in places, noted below. The Abstract and Conclusions are somewhat hard to read and should be edited to make them more comprehensible to the general reader. In my opinion, the Conclusions are too short. They should include additional explanation, so that the general findings of the study can be understood from reading the Conclusions only.

L1 ‘Ocean waves are known to decay exponentially when they interact with sea ice.’ My understanding from the literature is that there is some uncertainty around this. Suggest softening the sentence.

L4 ‘this implies that the subgrid scale physics is missing’ - how? I don’t understand this sentence.

L12 ‘model ice types, i.e., wave-ice interaction parameterisations. Despite these parameterisations being derived from different concepts and missing the subgrid scale physics relating to sea ice field heterogeneity.’ This is not clearly written. Please edit.

L24 ‘describe that’ -> ‘state that’

L29-31 There is a bit of repetition here

L40 ‘qualify’ >’caution that’

L46 ‘Besides the model interior, e.g., wave-ice interaction parameterisations, the 0th order uncertainty pertains to sea ice forcing accuracy such as SIC and sea ice thickness (SIT).’ -> Suggest rewording as follows ‘Uncertainty in modelling waves in ice arises both from parametrisation of wave-ice interactions and from uncertainty in sea ice variables used as forcing, specifically SIC and sea ice thickness (SIT).’ or similar. ‘Model interior’ sounds a little strange to me.

L65 ‘observation’ -> ‘observations’

L67 ‘which led to the subject of satellite retrieved SIC.’ - unnecessary, suggest removing

L85 ‘was less expansive’ - than what?

L116 ‘is’ -> ‘denote’

L117 ‘Four algorithms that appear most frequently in literature were considered, and the following algorithms were selected’ -> ‘Four algorithms that appear most frequently in literature were selected’

L180 Briefly note what ‘ST4’ and ‘ST6’ are.

L204 ‘and the use in wave-ice models’ -> ‘and use in wave-ice models’

L207 ‘the wave’ -> ‘waves’?

L218 ‘the subgrid scale physics is completely missing’ -> ‘the sub grid scale distribution of sea ice and ice types are missing’ ?

L218 The two sentences beginning ‘It is plausible’ I don’t really understand. Please clarify.

L222 Sentence beginning ‘Moreover’ doesn’t quite make sense. Please check.

L233 ‘The ARCMFC wave model has a horizontal resolution of around 8 km and also used an ice mask; from December 2019, the month after our observation, the model was upgraded to simulate waves under sea ice cover based on Sutherland 235 et al. (2019)’s two-layer sea ice model.’ So which version did you use? If the latter, no need to mention the previous model version.

L243 ‘The time series figure depicts the effect of sea ice on waves each time R/V Mirai sailed in the ice cover as the uncertainty generally increased.’ > ‘The figure shows that each time R/V Mirai sailed into ice cover, uncertainty in wave height generally increased.’

L250 I don’t quite follow this sentence.

L264 ‘having open water to 0.30 SIC’ - it is a little unclear what this means.

L269 ‘at the finals hours on 6 Nov’ - final hour? 23:00?

L271 ‘indicate instrument noise’ -> ‘indicate instrument noise only’?

L275 ‘mean(Hm0)’ - I think this is the mean across the six SIC forcing simulations, but it is not defined. Similarly for mean(c)

L285 Perhaps, `NRCSs provide an alternative indication of true sea ice fields’? The passive microwave radiometer products do also provide indication of true sea ice fields, although they have uncertainties.

L287 `depicts sea ice edges have a wavy’ > ‘depicts sea ice edges that have a wavy’

L292 ‘appears’ -> ‘appear’

L293 ‘the waters in this area were not high SIC’ -> ‘SIC was not high in this area’

L310 ‘fetch on’ -> ‘fetch over’

L312 ‘non-homogeneous nature of wind that generates waves and the SIC field heterogeneity’ -> ‘the heterogeneity of both the nature of wind that generates waves and the SIC field’

L348 The two sentence beginning on this line are a little unclear. I think they would benefit from some further explanation.

L360 Fig. 9b merits a sentence or two description here.

L365 ‘observation of’ -> ‘observed’

L368 ‘experiment was conducted’ -> ‘experiments were conducted’

L390 ‘sensitivity on’ -> `sensitivity to’

L397 ‘The results remained robust’ - which results exactly?

L398 ‘same outcome’ - suggest being more specific here

L403 ‘models represent’ -> ‘model represents’

L409 ‘the sice uncertainty experiment’ - this experiment should be briefly described here, so that a reader can understand the Conclusions without reading the text.

L413 ‘completely missing the subgrid scale physics relating to sea ice field heterogeneity’ - suggest explaining what exactly is missing here

L418 Perhaps use ‘approaches’ rather than ‘ends’

L471 ‘These estimates are noise because SSTs were too warm for new and young ice to form.’ Is this from SSTs captured by the ship? The ship-measured sea temperatures are taken 1m below the surface, and could be warmer than the the true surface temperature.

L491 ‘We’ve’ -> ‘We have’

Fig. 2 - should add a legend for the line plot for colour-blind readers

Fig. 3-4 - remove ‘Model’ from the y-axis label, as these figures also include observations

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (14 Apr 2020) by David Schroeder

AR by Takehiko Nose on behalf of the Authors (24 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (04 May 2020) by David Schroeder

Short summary

Accurate wave modelling in and near ice-covered ocean requires true sea ice concentration mapping of the model region. The information derived from satellite instruments has considerable uncertainty depending on retrieval algorithms and sensors. This study shows that the accuracy of satellite-retrieved sea ice concentration estimates is a major error source in wave–ice models. A similar feedback effect of sea ice concentration uncertainty may also apply to modelling lower atmospheric conditions.