This federal contract award, NNX16AD59G, was granted by the Shared Services Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the University of Maryland, College Park. The $716,781.97 grant is for research to provide an improved and more consistent analysis of the variable and rapidly changing climate at high northern latitudes within the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) framework. This work directly addresses two focus areas of NASA's Modeling Analysis and Prediction (MAP) program, specifically improvements to the Arctic sea ice and ocean modeling within the GEOS-5 General Circulation Model, as well as ocean-sea ice state estimation in the Arctic. The proposed research will utilize statistical analysis of remote sensing and in-situ data sets, as well as data assimilation experiments with the ocean model and coupled system. No set-aside designation was used for this award.