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Seasonal Arctic sea ice forecasting with probabilistic deep learning.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Pérez-Ortiz, María 
Paige, Brooks 

Abstract

Anthropogenic warming has led to an unprecedented year-round reduction in Arctic sea ice extent. This has far-reaching consequences for indigenous and local communities, polar ecosystems, and global climate, motivating the need for accurate seasonal sea ice forecasts. While physics-based dynamical models can successfully forecast sea ice concentration several weeks ahead, they struggle to outperform simple statistical benchmarks at longer lead times. We present a probabilistic, deep learning sea ice forecasting system, IceNet. The system has been trained on climate simulations and observational data to forecast the next 6 months of monthly-averaged sea ice concentration maps. We show that IceNet advances the range of accurate sea ice forecasts, outperforming a state-of-the-art dynamical model in seasonal forecasts of summer sea ice, particularly for extreme sea ice events. This step-change in sea ice forecasting ability brings us closer to conservation tools that mitigate risks associated with rapid sea ice loss.

Description

Keywords

37 Earth Sciences, 3708 Oceanography, 3709 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience, 13 Climate Action

Journal Title

Nat Commun

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723
2041-1723

Volume Title

12

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
EPSRC (via Alan Turing Institute) (EP/T001569/1)