Whether configured for operational purposes or for research, current coupled ice-ocean models and OGCMs lack sophistication in regard to core aspects of sea ice behavior, notably the determinative contribution that ocean waves make in evolving the sea ice canopy and hastening its annihilation. Considerably enhanced climate resolving accuracy and reliability can potentially be achieved by incorporating naturally pervasive ocean wave / sea ice interactivity into a state-of-the-art polar ocean modeling framework originally developed and hosted by NERSC in Norway. This paper focuses on how to do this, recognizing the benefits that will flow from the research through better model parameterization and forecasting precision - especially with reference to contemporary adverse global warming effects.
Recently, a sequence of publications has appeared that focuses on how natural ocean waves interact with polar sea ice in its several forms: quasi-continuous sheets, broken-up pack ice characteristic of the MIZ and pancake ice slurries (Shen and Squire, 1998; Squire, 2007; Squire et al., 1995). Considerable work has been done to understand scattering from various sea ice irregularities, e.g. cracks, open or refrozen leads, floe edges, changes in material property or thickness, pressure ridges, etc. (Bennetts and Squire, 2012b; Vaughan and Squire, 2007; Vaughan et al., 2007; Williams and Squire, 2004, 2006, 2007) and on ocean wave propagation through open ice fields such as MIZs (Bennetts et al., 2010; Bennetts and Squire, 2009, 2010; Bennetts and Williams, 2010). In addition, these elemental studies have been brought together to replicate how waves travel through large swathes of quasi-continuous natural sea ice that include an authentic distribution of leads and a representative empirical topography (Mahoney et al., 2007) found by submarine upward-looking sonar (Squire et al., 2009; Vaughan et al., 2009). Comparable progress has been made in the MIZ too (Bennetts et al., 2010; Bennetts and Squire, 2012b; Kohout and Meylan, 2008), where the FSD is caused primarily by ocean waves.
