Using records from submarine, aircraft and satellites to evaluate climate model simulations of Arctic sea ice thickness

Stroeve, J.; Barrett, A.; Serreze, M.; Schweiger, A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-1839-2014

Articles | Volume 8, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-1839-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-1839-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 5

Research article

|

10 Oct 2014

Research article |

| 10 Oct 2014

Using records from submarine, aircraft and satellites to evaluate climate model simulations of Arctic sea ice thickness

J. Stroeve, A. Barrett, M. Serreze, and A. Schweiger

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Final revised paper (published on 10 Oct 2014)
Preprint (discussion started on 28 Apr 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC C821: 'Review of "Using records from submarine, aircraft and satellite to evaluate climate model simulations of Arctic sea ice thickness" by J. Stroeve, A. Barrett, M. Serreze and A. Schweiger.', Francois Massonnet, 28 May 2014
SC C903: 'reference listed in the reference list but missing in the core text of the manuscript', Pierre Rampal, 13 Jun 2014
RC C1029: 'Review of tc-2014-35', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Jul 2014
AC C1475: 'Response to reviewers', Julienne Stroeve, 06 Aug 2014

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Julienne Stroeve on behalf of the Authors (06 Aug 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (08 Aug 2014) by Hajo Eicken

RR by Francois Massonnet (26 Aug 2014)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

(Comment by F. Massonnet)

I thank the authors for considering my points. Most of them have been taken into account. The sample of 33 models is OK to me, and the table with model information is welcome.

I can see from the authors response that they are aware that the treatment of uncertainties during model evaluation is the main unknown. I wish this could be more reflected in the text. For example, the abstract is very definitive, in particular the last sentence. Adding "although large uncertainties in observational products complicate model evaluation" could temper the conclusions. I would also repeat that these uncertainties are not well quantified and make the evaluation challenging in the conclusions. I'm asking this because the abstract and the conclusions will be the two parts of the paper that will be read the most, and I cannot accept that a reader is not warned about how large these uncertainties are. I noted that Reviewer#2 (who submitted his review after mine) makes the same point, so I think the abstract and conclusions must include a recognition that it is not as easy to evaluate model thickness as it is to evaluate model extent/area, and that the conclusions have to be taken with care.

Two more comments

In the new manuscript:
- p.2, l. 51-52: "Simulating the sea ice distribution has emerged as a key issue". I think you mean simulating the *spatial* distribution of sea ice thickness, not the sub-grid scale distribution of ice thickness, right? If so, please use "spatial" (the evaluation of the CMIP5 subgrid scale distribution of sea ice thickness has to my knowledge not be conducted yet).

Regarding author response
- p. 6. The authors write that "Simply put, PIOMAS does not necessarily reflect the true observed thickness distributions. Compared to observations, biases in PIOMAS are similar to those for the models in the CMIP5 archive". This is an interesting information that should appear in the new manuscript version. That the product used to make the evaluation is closer to the models than the truth is an issue (although I recognize PIOMAS is the best that we have so far) and should be acknowledged somewhere.

- p. 12, remark 2.: The authors write that there is no mention in Kwok's paper of setting IceSAT thicknesses less than 0.1 m to open water. There is (Kwok et al., doi:10.1029/2009JC005312, p. 5: "All samples with ice draft less than 10 cm are considered to be open water"). I'm just wondering whether this is a big issue in model evaluation. Apparently it is not, but please mention at least that IceSAT masks data with less than 10 cm.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (31 Aug 2014) by Hajo Eicken

AR by Julienne Stroeve on behalf of the Authors (06 Sep 2014) Author's response Manuscript

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