Model data from: Revisiting the status of the Arctic’s Last Ice Area as a refuge for marine predators

The Last Ice Area (LIA), located north of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Greenland, has the Arctic’s oldest and thickest sea ice. The LIA is hypothesized to be a potential climate refuge for ice-dependent top predators as Arctic sea ice continues to decline. However, recent studies indicate the region may be less resilient than expected. We used a coupled biophysical model to examine the impact of changes in sea ice and nutrient availability on the LIA marine planktonic ecosystem and the ecological potential of this critical area. The model was used to generate two downscaled simulations, which were forced by two IPCC AR6 climate models (GFDL-ESM4 and CNRM-6-1-HR using the SSP5-8.5 shared socioeconomic pathway), to investigate potential changes in primary productivity (PP) with different rates of future warming. Both downscaled model runs, which captured observed sea-ice dynamics, predicted declines in LIA sea-ice concentration and thickness. Under CNRM-6-1-HR, summer sea ice was l..., , # Model data from: Revisiting the status of the Arctic’s Last Ice Area as a refuge for marine predators #### Paper Kristin L. Laidre, Axel Schweiger, Jinlun Zhang, Benjamin Cohen, Michael Steele, Steven H. Ferguson, G. W. K. Moore “Revisiting the status of the Arctic’s Last Ice Area as a refuge for marine predators”, Ecosphere #### Affiliations: Laidre, Schweiger, Zhang, Cohen, Steele: Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA Ferguson: Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Arctic Region, Winnipeg, MB, Canada Moore: Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Canada #### Contact 2026-03-30: Axel Schweiger ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])) #### Data Format There are 4 separate data sets stored in 4 data files in tar format to maintain the directory structure. All files are in internally compressed netcdf-4 format so that additional compression will not likely result in significant reduction in file size. This data set contains the n..., ,