C52A-05
Assimilation of blended Cryosat-2/SMOS sea ice thickness observations into the U.S. Navy ACNFS.
Friday, 18 December 2015: 11:20
3007 (Moscone West)
David A Hebert1, Alan J Wallcraft2, Pamela G Posey2, Li Li3 and Richard Allard4, (1)Naval Research Lab Stennis Space Center, Stennis Space Center, MS, United States, (2)Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, MS, United States, (3)US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, United States, (4)Naval Research Lab, Stennis Space Center, MS, United States
Abstract:
Cryosat-2 and SMOS sea ice thickness observations have been available to the community in recent years. Cryosat-2 gives best ice thicknesses greater than 0.5 meters, while SMOS is best for thicknesses less than 0.5 meters. In this talk we present a method to blend Cryosat-2 and SMOS ice thicknesses to provide one observation dataset that spans the full range of observed ice thickness. The Cryosat-2/SMOS blended sea ice concentration for March, 2014 is assimilated into the U.S. Navy Arctic Cap Nowcast/Forecast System (ACNFS) and run forward for one year. Modeled sea ice thicknesses from this run are compared to those from an ACNFS run without the thickness assimilation and sea ice thicknesses obtained from 2015 NASA operation Ice Bridge.
