Observations and modeling of the ice-ocean conditions in the coastal Chukchi and Beaufort Seas

The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas include several important hydrological features:inflow of the Pacific water, Alaska coast current (ACC), the seasonal to perennial sea ice cover, and landfast ice along the Alaskan coast.The dynamics of this coupled ice-ocean system is important for both regional scale oceanography and large-scale global climate change research.A number of moorings were deployed in the area by JAMSTEC since 1992, and the data revealed highly variable characteristics of the hydrological environment.A regional high-resolution coupled ice-ocean model of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas was established to simulate the ice-ocean environment and unique seasonal landfast ice in the coastal Beaufort Sea.The model results reproduced the Beaufort gyre and the ACC.The depth-averaged annual mean ocean currents along the Beaufort Sea coast and shelf break compared well with data from four moored ADCPs, but the simulated velocity had smaller standard deviations, which indicate small-scale eddies were frequent in the region.The model results captured the seasonal variations of sea ice area as compared with remote sensing data, and the simulated sea ice velocity showed an almost stationary area along the Beaufort Sea coast that was similar to the observed landfast ice extent.It is the combined effects of the weak oceanic current near the coast, a prevailing wind with an onshore component, the opposite direction of the ocean current, and the blocking by the coastline that make the Beaufort Sea coastal areas prone to the formation of landfast ice.