Satellite information of sea ice for model validation

Abstract

Emergence of extensively large computational facilities have enabled the scientific world to use earth system models for understating the prevailing dynamics of the earth's atmosphere, ocean and cryosphere and their inter relations. The sea ice in the arctic and the Antarctic has been identified as one of the main proxies to study the climate changes. The rapid sea-ice melting in the Arctic and disappearance of multi-year sea ice has become a matter of concern. The earth system models couple the ocean, atmosphere and sea-ice in order to bring out the possible inter connections between these three very important components and their role in the changing climate. The Indian monsoon is seen to be subjected to nonlinear changes in the recent years. The rapid ice melt in the Arctic sea ice is apparently linked to the changes in the weather and climate of the Indian subcontinent. The recent findings reveal the relation between the high events occurs in the Indian subcontinent and the Arctic sea ice melt episodes. The coupled models are being used in order to study the depth of these relations. However, the models have to be validated extensively by using measured parameters. The satellite measurements of sea-ice starts from way back in 1979. There have been many data sets available since then. Here in this study, an evaluation of the existing data sets is conducted. There are some uncertainties in these data sets. It could be associated with the absence of a single sensor for a long period of time and also the absence of accurate in-situ measurements in order to validate the satellite measurements.