The Arctic Ocean simulated in fourteen global ocean-sea ice models in the framework of the Coordinated Ocean-ice Reference Experiments, phase II (CORE II) is analyzed. The focus is on the Arctic sea ice extent, the solid freshwater (FW) sources and solid freshwater content (FWC). Available observations are used for model evaluation. The variability of sea ice extent and solid FW budget is more consistently reproduced than their mean state in the models. The descending trend of September sea ice extent is well simulated in terms of the model ensemble mean. Models overestimating sea ice thickness tend to underestimate the descending trend of September sea ice extent. The models underestimate the observed sea ice thinning trend by a factor of two. When averaged on decadal time scales, the variation of Arctic solid FWC is contributed by those of both sea ice production and sea ice transport, which are out of phase in time. The solid FWC decreased in the recent decades, caused mainly by the reduction in sea ice thickness. The models did not simulate the acceleration of sea ice thickness decline, leading to an underestimation of solid FWC trend after 2000. The common model behaviour, including the tendency to underestimate the trend of sea ice thickness and March sea ice extent, remains to be improved.
Dear editor,We now submit the revised manuscript of CORE-II Arctic Part 1. The minor comments by the reviewers, including some of the optional suggestions, were considered in the revision.Thank you for your help during the review process.
Yours sincerely the authors
Cover LetterDear reviewer, Thank you for your helpful comments.In the revised version we add the reference to the new paper of Carmack et al. 2015. (line 45 and footnote 2).The typos like in line 342 of the original version are due to typos in a citation. The citation has been updated.
The authorsreply to reviewer 1 Dear reviewer, We addressed most of your optional suggestions in our revision. Thanks for your help.(1)Concerning not using the full record for the trend, although the record to 2007 has acceleration at the end, the subsequent record (to 2015) shows this was a transient. I still recommend using the full record for trend analysis Reply: The trends are calculated and discussed for both periods (1979-2003 and 1979-2007). Table 2 and lines 241-274.(2) Table 1: It would be helpful to have more information on the sea ice models--how many layers, how many thickness categories, is there a ridging parameterization, how is albedo calculated? Also might make sense to group the models in the plots by ice model rather than ocean model.Reply: We have an appendix (Appendix A) now to describe the sea ice models used in the CORE-II simulations. For the ordering of models in tables and figures, we try to keep the same order in both the CORE-II Arctic papers (on solid and liquid freshwater) for a close linkage of the two parts. Reply: We did the analysis and the results are briefly mentioned in the paper now (lines 271-274).(4) Line 282: Not sure that th...