Progress in implementing one-way and two-way ROMS+ICE coupling with atmospheric models over an Arctic polynya

Alastair D. Jenkins (1), W. Paul Budgell (2,1), Dan S. Schaffer (3), Christopher Moore (4), and Anne D. Sandvik (1)

(1) BCCR, Geophysical Institute, Bergen, Norway
(2) IMR, Marine Environment Centre, Bergen, Norway
(3) NOAA/ERL/Forecast Systems Lab, Boulder, CO, USA
(4) JISAO, University of Washington/NOAA-PMEL, Seattle, WA, USA

Brine rejection during ice formation over polar continental shelf areas is thought to make a substantial contribution to the generation of oceanic deep water, with significant consequences for the interior ocean circulation, and for the global climate on decadal to millenial timescales. A substantial proportion of this ice-formation and brine-rejection process is associated with the formation of coastal polynyas during periods with offshore winds.

In order to quantify the air-sea exchange processes involved, we are running ROMS with a dynamic-thermodynamic sea ice component, with input from the MM5 mesoscale atmospheric model, for Storfjorden (Svalbard). Since there are great differences in the surface boundary conditions between ice-covered and open water areas, which will cause substantial changes in the atmospheric boundary layer, we are in addition implementing two-way coupling of ROMS+Ice with the WRF mesoscale atmospheric model, the coupling being an implementation of the WRF I/O Application Programming Interface using the Argonne Model Coupling Toolkit (MCT). This work is still in progress and we will present a report on the status of and results from the MM5 -> ROMS and WRF <-> ROMS coupled model simulations.