This project will enhance short-term forecasting of Alaska’s coastal sea ice through advanced modeling and iterative engagements of local communities and partners in Alaska. The existing prediction tool based on a state-of-art sea ice model will be further refined to use higher spatial resolution (1.5km) and incorporate impacts from tides. This project will collaborate with Alaskan Communities to build co-design partnerships, conduct interviews, workshops, and/or surveys to better understand user needs and usability of the prediction tool, and better understand how sea ice coverage impacts Alaskan communities that depend on sea ice for hunting activities and transportation. These engagement activities are repeated every year in parallel with the modeling research, and will encourage the co-design process of a sea ice prediction tool for the region.

Annual Goals:

1. 2025: Refine a grid to use higher resolution (1.5 km) for better representation of coastal sea ice processes, examine various forcing datasets for atmosphere and ocean, and assess tidal impacts on the stability of landfast ice cover.
2. 2026: Calibration and verification of the standalone CICE6 and implement the model as the short-term nowcast/forecast sea ice prediction model (as part of GCAS) will be completed.
3. 2027: The model predictions and their visualizations will be evaluated collaboratively with the end user groups to solicit feedback and iterative updates to the user interface.