Regional numerical modeling provides a valuable means to assess important aspects of natural systems when the cost and effort of direct observation is impractical; the Arctic Ocean and its marginal seas and archipelagos represent a domain where such applications abound. We describe the configuration of and results from a set of coupled sea-ice ocean circulation models that are based on the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS). Challenging features include large fresh water fluxes from the major Arctic rivers, seasonal land-fast ice, and ice-covered open boundary conditions in nested models. A broad-scale domain, dubbed the Pan-Arctic ROMS (PAROMS) model, extends from the Aleutian Islands to southern Greenland using a telescoping horizontal grid spacing that varies from 4 km in the Pacific to 8 km in the Atlantic. Higher-resolution domains include nested grids at 3 km and 500 m grid spacing. Coastal discharges are prescribed as lateral inflows distributed over the depth of the ocean-land interface. The model includes tides, sea ice, updated bathymetry, and atmospheric forcing from the MERRA reanalysis. We assess the model’s performance with respect to tides, storm surges, wind-driven circulation, and thermohaline fields. A hindcast integrated over 1983-2015 provides a means to assess synoptic, seasonal and inter-annual variability. Applications include investigations of shelf flow field pathways, residence times and advective timescales, and energetics balances.