PARASO, a circum-Antarctic fully-coupled ice-sheet - ocean - sea-ice - atmosphere - land model involving f.ETISh1.7, NEMO3.6, LIM3.6, COSMO5.0 and CLM4.5

Abstract

<p>How well is the Antarctic climate over the last decades represented in climate models and how predictable is its future evolution? These questions delve into the specificities of the Antarctic climate, a system characterized by large natural fluctuations and complex interactions between the ice sheet, ocean, sea ice and atmosphere. The PARAMOUR project aims at improving our understanding of key processes which control the variability and predictability of the Antarctic climate at the decadal timescale. In this context, we introduce PARASO, a novel fully-coupled regional ocean - sea-ice - ice-sheet - atmosphere climate model over an Antarctic circumpolar domain covering the full Southern Ocean. The state-of-the-art models used are f.ETISh1.7 (ice sheet), NEMO3.6 (ocean), LIM3.6 (sea ice), COSMO5.0 (atmosphere) and CLM4.5 (land), which are run at a horizontal resolution close to 1/4°. One key feature of this tool resides in a novel two-way coupling interface for representing the ocean - ice-sheet interactions, through explicitly resolved ice-shelf cavities. We also consider the impact of atmospheric processes on the Antarctic ice sheet through surface mass exchanges between COSMO-CLM and f.ETISh. Our developments include a new surface tiling approach to combine open-ocean and sea-ice covered cells within COSMO. Using a 30 year-long run, we investigate the model performance and the interannual-to-decadal variability of the simulated Antarctic climate. The focus is on the interactions between the atmosphere, ocean and ice components at the regional scale and the links with larger spatial scales. Specific attention is paid to the mass balance of ice sheets and ice shelves, which influences both the ice sheet dynamics and the changes in the ocean and atmosphere. The system and its performance will be documented in this presentation together with some aspects of decadal variability from a 30-year integration forced with reanalyses (ERA5 and ORAS5). Early results of a 3-member retrospective forecast driven by EC-Earth will also be presented.</p>