Physical Oceanography (Jun 2019)
Reconstruction of the Ice Thickness Seasonal Evolution in the Northeastern Sea of Azov Using Different Arrays of Meteorological Data
Abstract
Purpose. The aim of the paper was to compare the results of numerical experiments on reconstructing seasonal thermal evolution of the sea ice thickness with the data of in situ observations of the ice state in the northeastern part of the Taganrog Bay. Methods and Results. Characteristics of the ice state in the northeastern part of the Taganrog Bay were studied using the previously developed thermodynamical model of sea ice. The data of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ERA-Interim, regional prognostic model SKIRON and the array of daily eight (with 3-hour intervals) observations of the basic meteorological parameters (All-Russian Research Institute of Hydrometeorological Information – World Data Center (RIHMI – WDC)) obtained at the meteorological station Taganrog, were used in the numerical experiments as the atmospheric forcing. The modeling results were compared with the in situ data for the winter seasons in 2007/2008–2010/2011. It is shown that the characteristics of the snow-ice cover resulted from application of various meteorological data as the external forcing, can be significantly different. Conclusions. The highest similarity between the modeled ice thickness seasonal variation and the one reconstructed using the observations data was obtained at applying the RIHMI – WDC data array. In this case, both thickness and the basic stages of the snow-ice cover evolution in the Taganrog Bay were adequately reproduced in the model. As compared to the in situ data, the results of the models based on the SKIRON and ERA-Interim data were mainly overestimating and underestimating, respectively. It is related, to a great extent, to determination of the precipitation amount, the prognostic values of which in ERA-Interim are higher than those in SKIRON. However, even in the calculations taking no account of atmospheric precipitation or in those for the ice seasons when the atmospheric precipitation is very insignificant, the SKIRON based model provides the higher values of ice thickness than the values resulted from the ERA-Interim based model. Analysis of the modeling results shows that adequate reconstruction of the ice state characteristics in the Azov Sea requires preliminary setting of the thermodynamic model depending on the chosen data array used as the atmospheric forcing.
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