Assimilating Copernicus SST Data into a Pan-Arctic Ice–Ocean Coupled Model with a Local SEIK Filter

AbstractSea surface temperature (SST) data from the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service are assimilated into a pan-Arctic ice–ocean coupled model using the ensemble-based local singular evolutive interpolated Kalman (LSEIK) filter. This study found that the SST deviation between model hindcasts and independent SST observations is reduced by the assimilation. Compared with model results without data assimilation, the deviation between the model hindcasts and independent SST observations has decreased by up to 0.2°C at the end of summer. The strongest SST improvements are located in the Greenland Sea, the Beaufort Sea, and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The SST assimilation also changes the sea ice concentration (SIC). Improvements of the ice concentrations are found in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the Beaufort Sea, and the central Arctic basin, while negative effects occur in the west area of the eastern Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea. Also, sea ice thickness (SIT) benefits from ensembl...