The Cryosphere
The Cryosphere
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Articles | Volume 14, issue 9
Articles | Volume 14, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-2977-2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-2977-2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 14, issue 9
Research article
 | 
14 Sep 2020
Research article |  | 14 Sep 2020

Seasonal transition dates can reveal biases in Arctic sea ice simulations

Abigail Smith, Alexandra Jahn, and Muyin Wang

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-2977-2020-supplement

Data sets

World Climate Research Programme Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (Phase 6) Department of Energy Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/

NCAR Climate Data Gateway, Version 3.0.10-20200728-204736 National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) http://www.earthsystemgrid.org

Arctic Sea Ice Seasonal Change and Melt/Freeze Climate Indicators from Satellite Data, Version 1, Data subset: 1979-03-01 to 2017-02-28 M. Steele, A. C. Bliss, G. Peng, W. N. Meier, and S. Dickinson https://doi.org/10.5067/KINANQKEZI4T

Arctic sea ice seasonal transition metrics from coupled climate model simulations, 1979–2013 A. Smith and A. Jahn https://doi.org/10.18739/A2000014J

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Short summary
The annual cycle of Arctic sea ice can be used to gain more information about how climate model simulations of sea ice compare to observations. In some models, the September sea ice area agrees with observations for the wrong reasons because biases in the timing of seasonal transitions compensate for other unrealistic sea ice characteristics. This research was done to provide new process-based metrics of Arctic sea ice using satellite observations, the CESM Large Ensemble, and CMIP6 models.
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