Study of ice formation in the Caspian Sea using numerical simulations

This paper studies the ice formation in the Caspian Sea using HYCOM model which is applied for 18 years to simulate the ice f0rmation in this basin. The vertical layers of 25 are considered, while the horizontal gride is 0.04⁰. The atmosphere forcing, initial condition, and river runoff were some from input files for the whole periods of simulations. The simulation show that the water begins to convert to ice in the middle of December. The maximum ice coverage is recorded in January with a thickness roughly 50 cm. The ice formation begins in the vicinity of the Volga and Ural rivers because of low salinity.