Abstract
Regional numerical modeling provides a valuable means to assess
important aspects of natural systems when the cost and effort of direct
observation is impractical; the Arctic Ocean and its marginal seas and
archipelagos represent a domain where such applications abound. We
describe the configuration of and results from a set of coupled sea-ice
ocean circulation models that are based on the Regional Ocean Modeling
System (ROMS). Challenging features include large fresh water fluxes
from the major Arctic rivers, seasonal land-fast ice, and ice-covered
open boundary conditions in nested models. A broad-scale domain, dubbed
the Pan-Arctic ROMS (PAROMS) model, extends from the Aleutian Islands to
southern Greenland using a telescoping horizontal grid spacing that
varies from 4 km in the Pacific to 8 km in the Atlantic.
Higher-resolution domains include nested grids at 3 km and 500 m grid
spacing. Coastal discharges are prescribed as lateral inflows
distributed over the depth of the ocean-land interface. The model
includes tides, sea ice, updated bathymetry, and atmospheric forcing
from the MERRA reanalysis. We assess the model’s performance with
respect to tides, storm surges, wind-driven circulation, and
thermohaline fields. A hindcast integrated over 1983-2015 provides a
means to assess synoptic, seasonal and inter-annual variability.
Applications include investigations of shelf flow field pathways,
residence times and advective timescales, and energetics balances.