Arctic Sea Ice Predictability and Prediction on Seasonal-to-Decadal Timescales

Sea ice stands as a major component of the climate system through its key impact on the water and energy budgets and it substantially impacts local and remote atmospheric and oceanic circulations. The societal and economic perspectives of Arctic sea ice prediction on seasonal-to-decadal timescales have led to increasing efforts in the development of sea ice forecast systems. An overview of the potential sources of Arctic sea ice predictability on these timescales will be given. Then, current approaches to generate ensemble sea ice reconstructions and initialize climate predictions will be described. The performances over the satellite era of the EC-Earth and CNRM-CM coupled models in predicting the Arctic sea ice cover and its spatial characteristics on seasonal timescales will finally be presented.