The MAR-NEMO coupling : exploring atmosphere-ocean-ice interactions in the Arctic using high resolution climate models

The Arctic climate is a major environmental concern as it is experiencing strong changes. Notably, recent Arctic warming drives rapid sea ice loss making the Arctic increasingly vulnerable. To better anticipate the consequences of this strong Arctic warming, it is crucial to better understand the driving processes responsible for large uncertainties in future climate projections. Interactions at the atmosphere-ocean-sea ice interface require particular attention. In this context, the PolarRES project aims at developing the coupled system MAR (atmosphere) - NEMO (ocean-sea ice) over the Arctic region at high spatial resolution (25 km). Such coupling will enable the climate community to access precise data at large scale. Since this coupling has never been applied to the Arctic, a proper model evaluation is required. Here standalone model simulations are compared against a newly compiled dataset including land station data. We find high correlations between the modeled and observed data. Our evaluation marks an important step in in the ongoing development of coupled models.