Impact of modulating surface heat flux through sea ice leads on Arctic sea ice in EC-Earth3 in different climates

Tian, Tian; Davy, Richard; Ponsoni, Leandro; Yang, Shuting

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2751-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2751-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2751-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 8

Research article

|

01 Aug 2025

Research article |

| 01 Aug 2025

Impact of modulating surface heat flux through sea ice leads on Arctic sea ice in EC-Earth3 in different climates

Tian Tian, Richard Davy, Leandro Ponsoni, and Shuting Yang

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2751-2025-supplement

Data sets

EC-Earth3 model output prepared for CMIP6 CMIP historical EC-Earth-Consortium https://doi.org/10.22033/ESGF/CMIP6.4700

Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS Passive Microwave Data. (NSIDC-0051, Version 2) N. DiGirolamo et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/MPYG15WAA4WX

Global sea ice concentration climate data record 1978--2020. (OSI-450-a, v3.0) OSI SAF https://doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0013

Model code and software

CDFTOOLS meom-group https://github.com/meom-group/CDFTOOLS

Short summary

We introduced a modulating factor to the surface heat flux in the EC-Earth3 model to address the lack of parameterization for turbulent exchange over sea ice leads and correct the bias in Arctic sea ice. Three pairwise experiments showed that the amplified heat flux effectively reduces the overestimated sea ice, especially during cold periods, thereby improving agreement with observed and reanalysis data for sea ice area, volume, and ice edge, particularly in the North Atlantic sector.