Genia Versha: Implementing new sea ice thermodynamics into MOM-X
Microscale processes within sea ice govern the ocean–atmosphere heat flux in regions of critical importance for Earth’s climate. These processes are represented in numerical sea-ice models via an effective thermal conductivity, which is highly uncertain due to the practical challenges associated with the field observations on which it is based. Recent laboratory experiments at ANU have developed a new representation of sea ice thermodynamics which is fundamentally different to existing approaches. The thermal conductivity in these new thermodynamics increases with sea ice temperature, which is in direct contrast to existing models which predict a decrease. We are attempting to implement these new thermodynamics into the latest versions of MOM, and thereby help to resolve persistent biases in Antarctic sea ice that have plagued successive iterations of climate models.