Assimilating CryoSat-2 Summer Sea Ice Thickness Observations

By incorporating satellite observations of summer sea ice thickness and concentration into MITgcm., a team of researchers from China and Germany is helping improve Arctic summer sea ice thickness estimation.

MITgcm underpins a new Chinese Arctic sea-ice prediction system.

Canadian researchers have been using the MITgcm in an idealized channel to investigate high-latitude tidal dynamics relevant to the fjords and channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

This month we spotlight work by a team from McGill University who have been using MITgcm to model oil spill scenarios around the Arctic Ocean Basin to better understand spill behavior in the presence of sea-ice.

A joint Harvard – MIT study uses MITgcm to explore the biogeochemistry of riverine mercury.

In a novel approach, MITgcmers Ian Fenty and Patrick Heimbach use optimal state and parameter estimation to improve the sea-ice simulations.

Nuno Serra from the University of Hamburg has used MITgcm in many ocean modeling projects, both from a process-modelling perspective and “realistically”, incorporating forcing from NCEP and ECMWF. He is especially interested in the processes regulating North Atlantic and North Pacific inter-annual to inter-decadal variability. A particular passion is overflows.

In a recent paper in the Journal of Physical Oceanography, An Nguyen (MIT) and co-authors Ronald Kwok (JPL) and Dimitris Menemenlis (JPL) report on work using MITgcm to better understand the origin and character of  the western arctic, upper halocline.

This month we shine light on recently published work by a team of Chinese investigators who have been using MITgcm to study Arctic sea ice.

Motivated by observations indicating rapidly falling annual sea-ice minima, Manfredi Manizza and co-workers have been using an Arctic configuration of MITgcm to explore the Arctic Ocean Carbon Cycle.