The numerical model employed in this study is a conceptual coupled model extensively utilized in prior research to evaluate the efficacy of data assimilation methods (e.g., [
8,
30,
31,
32,
33]). This coupled model comprises a fast atmosphere, a slow upper ocean, and a significantly slower deep ocean with an idealized sea ice component. Although the simple coupled model may lack the physical complexity of the coupled circulation model, it effectively characterizes interactions among multiple time-scale components in the climate system [
34] and adeptly captures certain challenges in SCDA.
The equation for this low-order coupled model is
where the six model variables represent the atmosphere, the ocean, and the sea ice [
,
, and
are for the atmosphere (hereafter denoted by
if present together),
is for the slab ocean,
is for the deep-ocean pycnocline, and
is for the sea ice concentration]. The dots above the variables indicate time trends (time derivatives). In this simple system, the seasonal period is defined as 10 nondimensional model time units (TUs, 1 TU=100 time steps, given
), and a model year (decade) is 10 (100) TUs. The atmosphere model is Lorenz’s chaotic model [
35], the standard values of the original parameters
,
, and
b are respectively 9.95, 28, and 8/3, and the atmospheric time scale is defined as 1 TU
. The coupling between the fast atmospheric and the slow ocean is achieved by choosing the values of the coupling coefficients
and
, which denote the ocean-to-atmosphere and the atmosphere-to-ocean forcing, respectively. The parameters
and
denote the linear forcing of the deep ocean and the nonlinear interaction of the upper ocean with the deep ocean.
is the ocean heat capacity, while
denotes the damping coefficient of the flat ocean variable
, their values define that the time scale of the ocean variable
is much slower than the atmosphere, e.g.,
defines the oceanic time scale to be approximately 10 times that of the atmosphere. In addition, the model uses the term
to simulate constant and seasonal forcing of the "climate" system. The parameter
denotes the coupling coefficient between sea ice and the slab ocean. In the pycnocline model,
represents the anomaly of the ocean pycnocline depth, with its trend equation derived from a binomial equilibrium model of the latitudinal time-averaged specific gravity pycnocline, interacting with
. The constant of proportionality is denoted as
, while
and
represent the linear forcing of the upper ocean and the nonlinear interaction of the upper ocean with the deep ocean. Finally, the sea ice model takes the form of a straightforward nonlinear function that maps enthalpy space to the sea ice concentration space. In this context, "sea ice"
influences the atmosphere solely through the interaction of the ocean variable
and the atmospheric variable
.
In order to solve the assimilation problem caused by the discontinuity in the distribution of sea-ice concentration, Zhang et al. (2013) introduced a nonlinear function of enthalpy (
) to define the sea-ice medium [
34], in which the nonlinear transformation function from enthalpy to ice concentration is
The
and
represent the thresholds for the ice generation and maintenance points, while
is used to adjust the shape of the curve, distributed between 0 and 1. It also has both
and
time scales according to the formulation.
Referring to Han et al. (2013) [
8], the parameter values of the true-value model are (
,
,
b,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
) = (9.95, 28, 8/3, 0.1, 1, 0.01, 1, 0.01, 0.01, 0.01, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 10, 10, 10, 10, 1, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 100, 50, 10, 80). We integrated the model by using a fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme, starting with the initial conditions (
,
,
,
,
,
) = (0 , 1 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0), and using the values after spin-up over 2500 TUs as the true initial values.
Figure 2 shows the time series of the three atmospheric and two oceanic variables, as well as the sea-ice variable, and it can be observed that the three atmospheric variables have attractor characteristics. The x-axis of
Figure 2 uses a different time scale, revealing that the variability of the oceanic variables is about 1/10 of that of the atmospheric variables.