The sensitivity of sea ice growth to the choice of ice shelf-ocean coupling algorithms.

<p>To quantify Antarctic ice mass loss and the subsequent sea level rise the geophysical modelling community is pushing towards frameworks that fully couple increasingly complex models of atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and ice sheets & shelves.  One particular hurdle remains the accurate representation of the vertical ocean-ice interaction at the base of ice shelves.  Parameterizations that are tuned to particular data sets naturally perform best in comparable ice shelf cavity environments. This poses the challenge in continental scale ocean-ice shelf models to chose one melt parameterizaton that performs sufficiently well in diverse cavity environment.  Thus adding uncertainty in ice shelf induced ocean freshening crucially affects modelled sea ice growth.  The impact magnitude of ice shelf supplied melt water on growth rates, thickness and extent of sea ice in the open ocean is currently debated in the literature.  <br>We reviewed and compared 16 commonly utilized melting/freezing parameterizations in coupled ocean-ice shelf models.  Melt rates differ hugely, in identical idealized conditions between 0.1m/yr to 3m/yr.  In this talk we present results of a realistic circum-Antarctic ice shelf and sea ice coupled ocean model (CICE, ROMS), where we look at the effects of the chosen ice shelf melt parameterization on modeled sea surface conditions and sea ice growth, regionally and circum Antarctic.</p>