An evaluation of the simulations of the Arctic Intermediate Water in climate models and reanalyses

Abstract

The simulations of the Arctic Intermediate Water in four datasets of climate models and reanalyses, CCSM3, CCSM4, SODA and GLORYS, are analyzed and evaluated. The climatological core temperatures and depths in both CCSM models exhibit deviations over 0.5A degrees C and 200 m from the PHC. SODA reanalysis reproduces relatively reasonable spatial patterns of core temperature and depth, while GLORYS, another reanalysis, shows a remarkable cooling and deepening drift compared with the result at the beginning of the dataset especially in the Eurasian Basin (about 2A degrees C). The heat contents at the depth of intermediate water in the CCSM models are overestimated with large positive errors nearly twice of that in the PHC. To the contrary, the GLORYS in 2009 show a negative error with a similar magnitude, which means the characteristic of the water mass is totally lost. The circulations in the two reanalyses at the depth of intermediate water are more energetic and realistic than those in the CCSMs, which is attributed to the horizontal eddy-permitting resolution. The velocity fields and the transports in the Fram Strait are also investigated. The necessity of finer horizontal resolution is concluded again. The northward volume transports are much larger in the two reanalyses, although they are still weak comparing with mooring observations. Finally, an investigation of the impact of assimilation is done with an evidence of the heat input from assimilation. It is thought to be a reason for the good performance in the SODA, while the GLORYS drifts dramatically without assimilation data in the Arctic Ocean.