Preface to special section on Arctic Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (AOMIP) Studies and Results

Abstract

] More than 130years ago,theAustrian Arctic explorer,Carl Weyprecht [Weyprecht and Ihne, 1913] (who discov-ered Franz Josef Land, an archipelago north of Russia, andwho advanced a successful scheme for international coop-eration in polar science—the International Polar Year con-cept) postulated that a number of fundamental problems ofmeteorology and geophysics could be solved near theEarth’spoles.Thishypothesisisstillvalidinthe21stcenturybecause the Arctic is recognized as a region where globalclimate change signals are amplified. The model-basedconclusion of Manabe and Stouffer [1994] that the firstsigns of climate change could be detected in the Arctic hasbeen corroborated by numerous other model results [e.g.,Holland and Bitz, 2003; Symon et al., 2005]. On the otherhand, it has been demonstrated that model conclusions maybe highly uncertain and that model estimates of futureclimate change differ significantly from model to model.In order to reduce these uncertainties, it is important tovalidate and to improve models. The latter is the first majorgoal of the Arctic Ocean Model Intercomparison Project(AOMIP). The second major AOMIP goal is to investigatevariability of the Arctic Ocean and sea ice at seasonal todecadal timescales, and identify mechanisms responsible forthe observed changes. Some of the latest AOMIP activitiesassociated with these project goals arereflected inthe papersof this special section.[