Interpretation of sea ice concentration monitoring results
Purpose
Monitoring of sea ice concentration is performed by a comparison between sea ice conditions in the atmospheric forecasts, and the corresponding conditions in the CMEMS ARC MFC forecasts. Any differences give rise to inconsistencies in exchanges between the atmosphere and the ocean/ice in the ARC MFC simulations. This is particularly the case for vertical heat fluxes.
Products
Tabulated differences and map plots with the geographical distribution of differences are displayed for selected forecast ranges, based on snapshots from the atmosperic forcing, and corresponding hourly result from TOPAZ. As a supplement, we also provide two-panel figures that show the sea ice contrations in both products, which are masked whereever the absolute value of the consentration difference is <0.05. Thus, the two-panel plots highlight information on the products' sea ice structure in the regions where the results are contrasting. This may e.g. reveal that differences are mainly due to a more diffuse ice edge in one product than in the other.
Note that for both types of maps pipe-separated links above the maps are included with the intention of providing a means for fast and informative jumps between results for different forecast ranges.