edu.ucar.opensky::articles:16997 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-26T03:03:34.174053 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7hh6m9q https://doi.org/10.7265/N5QJ7F7W https Related CreativeWork #1 Sea Ice Index https://doi.org/10.5067/ORBVIEW-2/SEAWIFS_OC.2014.0 https Related Dataset #1 SeaWiFS Level 2 Ocean Color Data Version 2014 https://doi.org/10.5067/J6JQLS9EJ5HU https Related Dataset #2 Bootstrap Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS, Version 2 Modeling photosynthesis in sea ice-covered waters 2015-09-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7hh6m9q https://doi.org/10.1002/2015MS000436 Long, Matthew author Lindsay, Keith author Holland, Marika M. author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher The lower trophic levels of marine ecosystems play a critical role in the Earth System mediating fluxes of carbon to the ocean interior. Many of the functional relationships describing biological rate processes, such as primary productivity, in marine ecosystem models are nonlinear functions of environmental state variables. As a result of nonlinearity, rate processes computed from mean fields at coarse resolution will differ from similar computations that incorporate small-scale heterogeneity. Here we examine how subgrid-scale variability in sea ice thickness impacts simulated net primary productivity (NPP) in a inline image configuration of the Community Earth System Model (CESM). CESM simulates a subgrid-scale ice thickness distribution and computes shortwave penetration independently for each ice thickness category. However, the default model formulation uses grid-cell mean irradiance to compute NPP. We demonstrate that accounting for subgrid-scale shortwave heterogeneity by computing light limitation terms under each ice category then averaging the result is a more accurate invocation of the photosynthesis equations. Moreover, this change delays seasonal bloom onset and increases interannual variability in NPP in the sea ice zone in the model. The new treatment reduces annual production by about 32% in the Arctic and 19% in the Antarctic. Our results highlight the importance of considering heterogeneity in physical fields when integrating nonlinear biogeochemical reactions. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright 2015 Author(s). None eng geoscientificInformation