Comparison of ice and wind-wave modules in WAVEWATCH III® in the Barents Sea

The global wave model WAVEWATCH III® provides several modules to include the wind and ice effects. In this study, we first use data from a set of Inertial Measurement Units collected in the Barents Sea on 5 May 2016 to calibrate two theory-driven ice modules that contain parameters. We then perform regional hindcasts using three different ice modules, two theory-driven and one data-driven, and five different wind modules. The resulting significant wave heights are compared in two ways: fixing the wind module and varying the ice module, and fixing the ice module and varying the wind module. Results of these comparisons show that the data-driven ice module is close to one of the theory-driven modules. The difference of significant wave height between wind modules is much less than that between ice modules. In addition, though all wind-wave modules predict similar wave energy spectra in open water, their behaviour in the ice-covered region differs. Of the five wind-wave modules, one shows very strong attenuation in the MIZ inconsistent with the in-situ observations. •IMU data are processed to determine wave spectra in ice covers.•Wave spectra are used to calibrate two wave-in-ice modules.•Hindcasts using WAVEWATCH III® are performed to compare various ice source and wind source modules.