Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx): 1. Scaling and Statistical Properties of Sea-Ice Deformation Fields

Amélie Bouchat , Nils Hutter , Jérôme Chanut , Frédéric Dupont , Dmitry Dukhovskoy , Gilles Garric , Younjoo J. Lee , Jean-François Lemieux , Camille Lique (1) , Martin Losch , Wieslaw Maslowski , Paul G. Myers , Einar Ólason , Pierre Rampal (2) , Till Rasmussen , Claude Talandier (1) , Bruno Tremblay , Qiang Wang

1 LOPS - Laboratoire d'Océanographie Physique et Spatiale
2 IGE - Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement

As the sea-ice modeling community is shifting to advanced numerical frameworks, developing new sea-ice rheologies, and increasing model spatial resolution, ubiquitous deformation features in the Arctic sea ice are now being resolved by sea-ice models. Initiated at the Forum for Arctic Modeling and Observational Synthesis, the Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx) aims at evaluating state-of-the-art sea-ice models using existing and new metrics to understand how the simulated deformation fields are affected by different representations of sea-ice physics (rheology) and by model configuration. Part 1 of the SIREx analysis is concerned with evaluation of the statistical distribution and scaling properties of sea-ice deformation fields from 35 different simulations against those from the RADARSAT Geophysical Processor System (RGPS). For the first time, the viscous-plastic (and the elastic-viscous-plastic variant), elastic-anisotropic-plastic, and Maxwell-elasto-brittle rheologies are compared in a single study. We find that both plastic and brittle sea-ice rheologies have the potential to reproduce the observed RGPS deformation statistics, including multi-fractality. Model configuration (e.g., numerical convergence, atmospheric representation, spatial resolution) and physical parameterizations (e.g., ice strength parameters and ice thickness distribution) both have effects as important as the choice of sea-ice rheology on the deformation statistics. It is therefore not straightforward to attribute model performance to a specific rheological framework using current deformation metrics. In light of these results, we further evaluate the statistical properties of simulated Linear Kinematic Features in a SIREx Part 2 companion paper.

Mots clés: sea-ice deformation; rheology; model intercomparison project; sea-ice modeling; sea-ice observations; scaling analysis

Domaines: Planète et Univers [physics]; Océanographie

Amélie Bouchat, Nils Hutter, Jérôme Chanut, Frédéric Dupont, Dmitry Dukhovskoy, et al.. Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx): 1. Scaling and Statistical Properties of Sea-Ice Deformation Fields. Journal of Geophysical Research. Oceans, 2022, 127, ⟨10.1029/2021JC017667⟩. ⟨insu-03683297⟩