Mesoscale eddies, generated by lateral gradients in salinity and temperature in the Arctic marginal ice zone (MIZ), are known to modulate the melting of sea ice in this region. Yet, it remains unclear if eddies also modify sea ice growth during the freezing season. Here, we use a set of idealized simulations to explore the sea ice growth above an eddying ocean. In the presence of eddies, mixing of the surface temperature and salinity fields induce heterogeneity in the heat and salt fluxes at the ice-ocean interface, ultimately imprinting heterogeneity on the sea ice thickness. A stronger eddy field imprints more heterogeneity in the sea ice thickness. More heterogeneity in the sea ice pack would likely impact the current and future evolution of the sea ice conditions in the Arctic, where a rapid transition towards an open-ocean regime is ongoing.

The processes driving the seasonal variability of the mixed layer salinity in the Arctic Ocean are investigated using a simulation performed with regional ocean – sea ice model at high resolution. While the seasonal variations of the mixed layer depth remain small, in particular under the perennial sea ice (O(30m)), the mean salinity of the mixed layer varies largely, with a seasonal cycle as high as 3 pss. On the shelves, where the sea ice is seasonal, the mixed layer is much fresher but exhibits a seasonal cycle with a similar amplitude. Overall, the seasonal variability of the mixed layer salinity results largely from a 1D vertical balance between the freshwater flux at the surface arising from the sea ice melt and freezing processes, and vertical mixing and entrainment occurring at the base of the mixed layer. The largest variations are found in summer, when the mixed layer is the thinnest. Over the shelves, this simple 1D balance is complexified due to the role of advection and river runoff that can locally affect the mixed layer depth and salinity. Interestingly, the largest variations are found less than 100km on each side of the sea ice edge, where all the processes affecting the mixed layer are amplified. This suggests the need to better observed and understand the ocean-sea ice-atmosphere exchanges in these regions.

Storms can have a direct impact on sea ice, but whether their effect is seen weeks to months later has received little attention. The immediate and longer term impacts of an idealized open water wind storm are investigated with a one-dimensional coupled ice-ocean model. Storms with different momentum, duration and date of occurrence are tested. During the storm, the mechanical forcing causes a deepening of the mixed layer, leading to an increase in mixed layer heat content, despite a decrease in mixed layer temperature. This results in a delay in sea ice formation that ranges between a few hours to weeks compared to the control run, depending on the storm characteristics. Throughout the freezing period, the storm-induced thick mixed layer experiences little variability, preventing warm water entrainment at the base of the mixed layer. This leads to faster sea ice growth compared to the control run, resulting in sea ice thickness differences of a few millimeters to around 10 cm before the melting onset. These results are stronger for runs with higher momentum storms which cause greater mixed layer deepening. Storms occurring in early August, when the ocean surface heat flux is positive, also amplify the results by forcing a greater increase in mixed layer heat content. The impacts of the storms are sensitive to the initial stratification, and amplified for a highly stratified ocean. We suggest that localized storms could significantly influence the seasonal dynamics of the mixed layer and consequently impact sea ice conditions.

Atlantic Water (AW) is the largest reservoir of heat in the Arctic Ocean, isolated from the surface and sea-ice by a strong halocline. In recent years AW shoaling and warming are thought to have had an increased influence on sea-ice in the Eurasian Basin. In this study we analyse 59000 profiles from across the Arctic from the 1970s to 2018 to obtain an observationally-based pan-Arctic picture of the AW layer, and to quantify temporal and spatial changes. The potential temperature maximum of the AW (the AW core) is found to be an easily detectable, and generally effective metric for assessments of AW properties, although temporal trends in AW core properties do not always reflect those of the entire AW layer. The AW core cools and freshens along the AW advection pathway as the AW loses heat and salt through vertical mixing at its upper bound, as well as via likely interaction with cascading shelf flows. In contrast to the Eurasian Basin, where the AW warms (by approximately 0.7°C between 2002 and 2018) in a pulse-like fashion and has an increased influence on upper ocean heat content, AW in the Canadian Basin cools (by approximately 0.1°C between 2008 and 2018) and becomes more isolated from the surface due to the intensification of the Beaufort Gyre. These opposing AW trends in the Eurasian and Canadian Basins of the Arctic over the last 40 years suggest that AW in these two regions may evolve differently over the coming decades.

We investigate the Chukchi and the Beaufort seas, where salty and warm Pacific Water flows in from the Bering Strait and interacts with the sea ice, contributing to its summer melt. For the first time, thanks to in-situ measurements recorded by two saildrones deployed during summer 2019 and to refined sea ice filtering in satellite L-Band radiometric data, we demonstrate the ability of satellite Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) observed by SMOS and SMAP to capture SSS freshening induced by sea ice melt, referred to as meltwater lenses (MWL). The largest MWL observed by the saildrones during this period occupied a large part of the Chukchi shelf, with a SSS freshening reaching -5 pss. it persisted for up to one month, to this MWL, induced low SSS pattern which restricted the transfer of air-sea momentum to the upper, as illustrated by measured wind speed and vertical profiles of currents. Combined with satellite-based Sea Surface Temperature, satellite SSS provides a monitoring of the different water masses encountered in the region during summer 2019. Using sea ice concentration and estimated Ekman transport, we analyse the spatial variability of sea surface properties after the sea ice edge retreat over the Chukchi and the Beaufort seas. The two MWL captured by both, the saildrones and the satellite measurements, result from different dynamics. Over the Beaufort Sea, the MWL evolution follows the meridional sea ice retreat, whereas in the Chukchi Sea, a large persisting MWL is generated by advection of a sea ice filament.

Translation of atmospheric forcing variability into the ocean interior via ocean ventilation is an important aspect of transient climate change. On a seasonal timescale, this translation is mediated by a so-called “Demon’ that prevents access to all except late-winter mixed-layer water. Here, we use an eddy-permitting numerical circulation model to investigate a similar process operating on longer timescales in the high-latitude North Atlantic, which we denote the “interannual Demon’. We find that interannual variations in atmospheric forcing are indeed mediated in their translation to the ocean interior. In particular, the signature of persistent strong atmospheric forcing driving deep mixed layers is preferentially ventilated to the interior when the forcing is ceased. Susceptibility to the interannual Demon depends on the location and density of subduction — with the rate at which newly ventilated water escapes its region of subduction being the crucial factor.

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 Modelling and Observational Synthesis (FAMOS), the Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx) aims at evaluating current 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 I 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 forcing, 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 (LKFs) in a SIREx Part II companion paper.

Simulating sea-ice drift and deformation in the Arctic Ocean is still a challenge because of the multi-scale interaction of sea-ice floes that compose the Arctic sea ice cover. The Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx) is a model intercomparison project formed within the Forum of Arctic Modeling and Observational Synthesis (FAMOS) to collect and design skill metrics to evaluate different recently suggested approaches for modeling linear kinematic features (LKFs) and provide guidance for modeling small-scale deformation. In this contribution, spatial and temporal properties of LKFs are assessed in 36 simulations of state-of-the-art sea ice models and compared to deformation features derived from RADARSAT Geophysical Processor System (RGPS). All simulations produce LKFs, but only very few models realistically simulate at least some statistics of LKF properties such as densities, lengths, or growth rates. All SIREx models overestimate the angle of fracture between conjugate pairs of LKFs and LKF lifetimes pointing to inaccurate model physics. The temporal and spatial resolution of a simulation and the spatial resolution of atmospheric forcing affect simulated LKFs as much as the model’s sea ice rheology and numerics. Only in very high resolution simulations (≤2\,km) the concentration and thickness anomalies along LKFs are large enough to affect air-ice-ocean interaction processes.

The marginal sea ice zone (MIZ) is a complex interface between the open ocean and the pack ice, where ocean-ice-atmosphere interactions are extremely complex. With a width of about 100 km, similar to the grid size of many climate models, the MIZ is not resolved in CMIP5 climate scenarios. In recent years, coupled climate models have been developed with ocean components at higher resolution, such as the high resolution version of the Met Office Global Coupled Model GC3 based on the GO6 configuration of the ORCA12 1/12° ocean model. We compare the MIZ representation in a coupled simulation with a simulation using the same ocean component forced by observed atmospheric data. Biases in the MIZ position and width are of the same order of magnitude in the coupled and forced model. The sea ice edge is strongly influenced by the ocean circulation and is often found at the wrong location, even when an observed atmospheric state is used to force the model. Despite a possible mismatch between atmosphere and ice/ocean in the forced model, due to the absence of feedback between sea ice and atmospheric temperature, surface heat fluxes in the MIZ are similar in amplitude in the coupled and forced simulations.  Our analysis focuses on the Greenland Sea because it is region of deep water formation, a major control of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and thus very important for climate scenarios. The strong interannual variability of sea ice in the Greenland Sea is examplified by the Odden tongue, a protrusion of sea ice extending northeastward away from the Greenland continental slope. The coupled model exhibits such interannual variability, with a sea ice concentration larger than observed on average. The relationship between atmosphere, ice concentration and mixed layer depth is analyzed to assess the performance of both coupled and forced 1/12° models to represent deep water formation in the Nordic seas.

The seasonal halocline impacts the exchange of heat, energy, and nutrients between the surface and the deeper ocean, and it is changing in response to Arctic sea ice melt over the past several decades. Here, we assess seasonal halocline formation in 1975 and 2006-2012 by comparing daily, May to September, below-ice salinity profiles collected in the Canada Basin. We evaluate differences between the two time periods using a one-dimensional (1D) bulk model to quantify differences in freshwater input and vertical mixing. The 1D model metrics indicate that two separate factors contribute similarly to stronger stratification in 2006-2012 than in 1975: (1) larger surface freshwater input and (2) less vertical mixing of that freshwater. The first factor is mainly important in August-September, consistent with a longer melt season in recent years. The second factor is mainly important from June until mid-August, when similar levels of freshwater input in 1975 and 2006-2012 are mixed over a different depth range, resulting in different stratification. These results imply that decadal changes to ice-ocean dynamics, in addition to freshwater input, significantly contribute to the stronger seasonal stratification in 2006-2012 than in 1975. The findings highlight the need for near-surface process studies to elucidate the roles of lateral processes and ice-ocean momentum exchange on vertical mixing.