This is the code for producing the results for the manuscript "Sea ice in the Barents and Kara seas: models versus reanalyses" (to be submitted). The package also contains a subset of the data needed for producing the plots. To run the code, first set the paths to the code and the data folder in python_code/utility_code/data_paths.py DATA_PATH (point to folder data_for_plots) and PROJ_PATH (point to code folder root) The Python scripts for producing the figures and printing out the results for the tables are listed below: Table 1 -Table 2 python_code/sea_ice/calc_mean_trend_and_print.pyTable 3 python_code/sea_ice/plot_iiee_timeseries.pyTable 4 python_code/ocean/calc_and_print_ocean_mean_and_trend_ease2g.pyTable 5 python_code/ocean/area_mean_temp_correlation_comp_halfyear.py Fig 1 python_code/sea_ice/sea_ice_area_timeseries_2d.pyFig 2 python_code/sea_ice/sea_ice_area_timeseries_2d.py, python_code/call_combine_plots.pyFig 3a-d python_code/sea_ice/plot_iiee.pyFig 3e,f python_code/sea_ice/plot_iiee_timeseries.py python_code/call_combine_plots.pyFig 4 python_code/sea_ice/plot_osidiff_significance_whole_MAM_ASO_new_order.pyFig 5, 6 python_code/sea_ice/plot_sic_MAM_ASO_trends_new_order.pyFig 7 python_code/ocean/mld_2d_timeseries_diff_easeg.py, python_code/call_combine_plots.py Fig A1, A2 python_code/ocean/plot_ocean_mld_temp_mean_and_trend_ease2g_new_order.py Some of the scripts are somewhat inefficient and require a significant amount of memory. Data sources: RARE 1.15.2 (Carton and Chepurin, 2023) data was acquired through the UMD Ocean Climate Lab https://www2.atmos.umd.edu/~carton/index_files2/rare1.15.2_download.htm. TOPAZ4b data were acquired from the CMEMS website https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00007. ORAS5 (Zuo et al., 2019) was acquired from the Universität Hamburg website https://www.cen.uni-hamburg.de/icdc/data/ocean/easy-init-ocean/ecmwf-oras5.html. The NorESM2-MM and CNRM-ESM2-1 simulations are part of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)’s CMIP6 archived simulations, which can be found on the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF, https: //pcmdi.llnl.gov/CMIP6/, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 2025). OSI-SAF data (EUMETSAT, 2022) is available at EUMETSAT https://doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0013. HIRHAM–NAOSIM data are available at the tape archive of the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) via https://hdl.handle.net/21.14106a6d312c42d4501e75bd9de9186b323206ff5a65b (Dorn, 2024, dataset DKRZ_LTA_049_ds00009). RASM data was acquired from Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, United States Acknowledgements: The data_for_plots data was generated using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information; https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00007 The authors wish to acknowledge CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland, for computational resources. ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot assisted with some of the initial data visualisation code. All code was reviewed and further refined by CÄ.