A series of experiments were conducted with the Goddard general circulation model to determine the effect of variation in the location of Arctic sea ice boundaries on the model's mean monthly climatology. A control was defined as the mean of six January-February simulations with ice boundaries corresponding to climatologically minimum ice cover occurring simultaneously in the Davis Strait, East Greenland Sea, Barents Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea. An anomaly was similarly defined as the mean of two simulations with maximum ice conditions occurring simultaneously in the same regions. The extremes were estimated from 17 years of observed conditions in the Atlantic sector, and from five years of data in the Pacific sector. When sea ice boundaries were at their maximum extent the following differences resulted in the January-February climatology as compared with minimum boundaries: Sea level pressure was higher by as much as 8 mb over the Barents Sea, by more than 4 mb in Davis Strait, and by sl... Abstract A series of experiments were conducted with the Goddard general circulation model to determine the effect of variation in the location of Arctic sea ice boundaries on the model's mean monthly climatology. A control was defined as the mean of six January-February simulations with ice boundaries corresponding to climatologically minimum ice cover occurring simultaneously in the Davis Strait, East Greenland Sea, Barents Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea. An anomaly was similarly defined as the mean of two simulations with maximum ice conditions occurring simultaneously in the same regions. The extremes were estimated from 17 years of observed conditions in the Atlantic sector, and from five years of data in the Pacific sector. When sea ice boundaries were at their maximum extent the following differences resulted in the January-February climatology as compared with minimum boundaries: Sea level pressure was higher by as much as 8 mb over the Barents Sea, by more than 4 mb in Davis Strait, and by sl...