Despite enormous scientific and technological progress in numerical weather and climate prediction, sea ice still remains unreliably predicted by models, both in short-term forecasting and climate projection applications. The total ice extent in both hemispheres is tied to the location of the ice edge, and consequently to what happens in the portion of the ice cover immediately adjacent to the open ocean that is called the marginal ice zone (MIZ). There is mounting evidence that processes occurring in the MIZ might play an important role in the polar climate of both hemispheres, yet some key physical processes are still missing in models. As sea ice models developed for climate studies are increasingly used for operational forecasting, the missing physics also impede short-term sea ice prediction skills. This paper is a mini-review that provides a historical perspective on how MIZ research has progressed since the 1970s, with a focus on the fundamental importance of the interactions between sea ice and surface gravity waves on sea ice dynamics. Completeness is not achieved, as the body of literature is huge, scattered and rapidly growing, but the intention is to inform future collaborative research efforts to improve our understanding and predictive capabilities of sea ice dynamics in the MIZ. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Theory, modelling and observations of marginal ice zone dynamics: multidisciplinary perspectives and outlooks’.

Current large‐scale sea ice models represent very crudely or are unable to simulate the formation, maintenance and decay of coastal landfast ice. We present a simple landfast ice parameterization representing the effect of grounded ice keels. This parameterization is based on bathymetry data and the mean ice thickness in a grid cell. It is easy to implement and can be used for two‐thickness and multithickness category models. Two free parameters are used to determine the critical thickness required for large ice keels to reach the bottom and to calculate the basal stress associated with the weight of the ridge above hydrostatic balance. A sensitivity study was conducted and demonstrates that the parameter associated with the critical thickness has the largest influence on the simulated landfast ice area. A 6 year (2001–2007) simulation with a 20 km resolution sea ice model was performed. The simulated landfast ice areas for regions off the coast of Siberia and for the Beaufort Sea were calculated and compared with data from the National Ice Center. With optimal parameters, the basal stress parameterization leads to a slightly shorter landfast ice season but overall provides a realistic seasonal cycle of the landfast ice area in the East Siberian, Laptev and Beaufort Seas. However, in the Kara Sea, where ice arches between islands are key to the stability of the landfast ice, the parameterization consistently leads to an underestimation of the landfast area.