AWI researcher Nils Hutter will be honoured for his outstanding master’s thesis

In his thesis, the AWI doctoral candidate focused on a key weakness of modern climate models, which present the sea ice at the North Pole as a highly homogenous unit consisting of a single or very few large ice sheets. “In reality, however, sea ice is a collection of countless, different-sized floes, which are driven by the wind and currents. This poses a few challenges for our modellers,” says Nils Hutter.

The reason why: if two of the ice floes move apart, it produces a “lead,” a strip of open ocean through which the ocean loses a great deal of its warmth to the colder atmosphere. This process has significant effects on the arctic climate, but can only be taken into account in climate models if their spatial resolution is increased. As the young researcher relates, “In my Master’s thesis I looked into whether these newly modelled, high-resolution sea-ice structures actually correspond to those ice structures we see in satellite observations. My conclusion: yes, they do.”

Hutter began his doctoral studies at the AWI’s Climate Dynamics section a few weeks ago, and will continue exploring the topic of “sea-ice modelling” in his dissertation. “My goal is to determine whether more accurate representations of the leads in sea ice produce better climate modelling results. To do so, I’ll be working with the AWI climate model ECHAM6-FESOM. With its boosted spatial resolution in the Arctic, I'll be able to include the leads in the ice, while still keeping the required computing power at an acceptable level,” says Hutter.

With the help of the AWI climate model, he also plans to investigate important natural processes in connection with the leads. “These include questions on thermal transport, the absorption of sunlight by the dark oceans, the growth of sea ice, and the changing level of biological activity near the ice leads,” explains Hutter.