Conservation of heat and mass in P-SKRIPS version 1: the coupled atmosphere–ice–ocean model of the Ross Sea

Abstract

Ocean–atmosphere–sea ice interactions are key to understanding the future of the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic continent. Regional coupled climate–sea ice–ocean models have been developed for several polar regions; however the conservation of heat and mass fluxes between coupled models is often overlooked due to computational difficulties. At regional scale, the non-conservation of water and energy can lead to model drift over multi-year model simulations. Here we present P-SKRIPS version 1, a new version of the SKRIPS coupled model setup for the Ross Sea region. Our development includes a full conservation of heat and mass fluxes transferred between the climate (PWRF) and sea ice–ocean (MITgcm) models. We examine open water, sea ice cover, and ice sheet interfaces. We show the evidence of the flux conservation in the results of a 1-month-long summer and 1-month-long winter test experiment. P-SKRIPS v.1 shows the implications of conserving heat flux over the Terra Nova Bay and Ross Sea polynyas in August 2016, eliminating the mismatch between total flux calculation in PWRF and MITgcm up to 922 W m−2.