Abstract
In this study, we investigate how sea ice extent and thickness are affected by additional turbulent mixing from unbroken surface waves. This ‘surface wave mixing’ (SWM) is parameterized by the inclusion of an extra mixing term in the k-ε turbulence scheme implemented in a global-scale ocean model (MOM5). Relative to simulations without SWM, we observe a reduction of seasonal extremes of sea ice extent in the Antarctic of about 9%. This reduction brings the seasonal amplitude of sea ice extent significantly closer to observations, as well as causing an increase in sea ice thickness of up to 15 cm leading up to and during the Antarctic summer.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science for the use of their 0.25-degree horizontal resolution version of MOM5.
Funding
S. Thomas and A.V. Babanin acknowledge DISI Australia-China Centre through grant no. ACSRF48199 and the US ONR support through grant no. N00014-17-1-3021. This research was undertaken with the assistance of resources from the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which is supported by the Australian Government. P. Heil was supported by the Australian Government through Australian Antarctic Science projects 4301 and 4390, the Cooperative Research Centre Programme through the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC) and the International Space Science Institute grant no. 406.
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Responsible Editor: Clemente Augusto Souza Tanajura
This article is part of the Topical Collection on the 10th International Workshop on Modeling the Ocean (IWMO), Santos, Brazil, 25-28 June 2018
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Thomas, S., Babanin, A.V., Walsh, K.J.E. et al. Effect of wave-induced mixing on Antarctic sea ice in a high-resolution ocean model. Ocean Dynamics 69, 737–746 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-019-01268-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-019-01268-0