Simulations with the sea ice model CICE investigating the impact of sea ice floe size distribution on seasonal Arctic sea ice retreat.

This dataset has been generated by implementing a power law derived sea ice floe size distribution model within the CICE sea ice model. We use this dataset within the associated paper (Bateson et al., 2019) to investigate the impact of floe size on the seasonal fragmentation and melt of Arctic sea ice. We document several findings including that the floe size distribution model has a spatially and temporally dependent impact on the sea ice cover, in particular enhancing the role of the marginal ice zone in sea ice loss. We also show a strong model sensitivity to floe size distribution parameters within limits constrained by observations. We furthermore find that the impact of waves on floe size and the sea ice cover is strongly moderated by the wave attenuation rate.