Article (Scientific journals)
Benefits of a Landfast Ice Representation on Simulated Antarctic Sea Ice and Coastal Polynya Dynamics
Pirlet, N.; Fichefet, T.; Vancoppenolle, M. et al.
2025In Journal of Geophysical Research. Oceans, 130 (9)
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Keywords :
Oceanography; Geophysics; Geochemistry and Petrology; Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous); Space and Planetary Science
Abstract :
[en] The Antarctic coastal marine region is a unique and highly complex environment, of which landfast ice and polynyas are key features, especially in the context of dense water formation. Current large-scale ocean-sea ice models used in climate studies simulate hardly any Antarctic landfast ice, which has presumably negative implications on sea ice and polynya dynamics. Here we develop, implement, and evaluate an empirical circumpolar Antarctic landfast-ice representation for large-scale ocean-sea ice models. This representation is based on the restoring of sea ice velocity to zero where and when landfast ice is observed, according to a recently released circum-Antarctic landfast ice database. Using 2001–2017 hindcast simulations with the NEMO- (Formula presented.) model, we demonstrate that prescribing landfast ice not only ensures accurate landfast ice coverage, as expected, but also largely improves the simulated landfast ice thickness and polynya dynamics. This includes more realistic polynya coverage, individual polynya shape, frequency, and ice production rates. Additionally, the model low bias in summer ice extent is reduced, as prescribing landfast ice locks thicker ice near the coast, taking longer to melt. Our simulations also give the first estimate of landfast ice volume, representing 10.6% of the pan-Antarctic total, compared to 3.8% of the total Antarctic sea ice extent. We argue that velocity restoring is appropriate for some investigations of the Antarctic landfast ice over the recent past, but not for the remote past or future projections, for which a physical representation of landfast ice drivers, particularly iceberg-sea ice interactions, is necessary.
Disciplines :
Earth sciences & physical geography
Author, co-author :
Pirlet, N. ;  Earth and Life Institute, Earth and Climate Research Center, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Fichefet, T.;  Earth and Life Institute, Earth and Climate Research Center, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Vancoppenolle, M. ;  Sorbonne Université, CNRS, IRD, MNHN, Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat: Expérimentations et Approches Numériques, LOCEAN/IPSL, Paris, France
Fraser, A.D. ;  Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Nipaluna/Hobart, Australia ; Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Nipaluna/Hobart, Australia
Mathiot, P. ;  CNRS/IRD/G-INP/INRAE, Institut des Geosciences de l’Environnement, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France
Rousset, C.;  Sorbonne Université, CNRS, IRD, MNHN, Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat: Expérimentations et Approches Numériques, LOCEAN/IPSL, Paris, France
Barthélemy, A.;  Earth and Life Institute, Earth and Climate Research Center, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Barriat, P.-Y.;  Earth and Life Institute, Earth and Climate Research Center, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Pelletier, C. ;  European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Bonn, Germany
Madec, G.;  Sorbonne Université, CNRS, IRD, MNHN, Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat: Expérimentations et Approches Numériques, LOCEAN/IPSL, Paris, France
Kittel, Christoph  ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géographie > Climatologie et Topoclimatologie ; CNRS/IRD/G-INP/INRAE, Institut des Geosciences de l’Environnement, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France ; Earth System Science and Department of Geography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Language :
English
Title :
Benefits of a Landfast Ice Representation on Simulated Antarctic Sea Ice and Coastal Polynya Dynamics
Publication date :
September 2025
Journal title :
Journal of Geophysical Research. Oceans
ISSN :
2169-9275
eISSN :
2169-9291
Publisher :
John Wiley and Sons Inc
Volume :
130
Issue :
9
Peer reviewed :
Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi
Funders :
F.R.S.-FNRS - Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique
Funding text :
The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which significantly helped improve the manuscript. We are also grateful to Q. Dalaiden for his assistance in adapting the atmospheric forcing and for many insightful discussions. We thank S. Nihashi for providing the polynya data associated with Nihashi and Ohshima ( 2015 ), and B. Richaud for proofreading the manuscript. This research was conducted within the Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research (FNRS), project LICEPOD, PDR Grant T.0079.22. Computational resources have been provided by the supercomputing facilities of the UCLouvain (CISM/UCL) and the Consortium des Equipements de Calcul Intensif en F\u00E9d\u00E9ration Wallonie Bruxelles (CECI), funded by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique\u2014FNRS (F.R.S.\u2013FNRS) (convention no. 2.5020.11) and by the Walloon Region. This project has received grant funding from Agence Nationale de la Recherche\u2014France 2030 as part of the PEPR TRACCS programme under Grant ANR\u201022\u2010EXTR\u2010008, and from the Australian Government as part of the Antarctic Science Collaboration Initiative program. ADF is supported by ARC Grants FT230100234, LP170101090, LE220100103, and DP240100325, and acknowledges the generous support of the Harris Charitable Trust through the Antarctic Science Foundation. We acknowledge the use of ChatGPT ( https://chat.openai.com/ ) to improve the writing style of a few paragraphs.
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