[MITgcm-devel] Re: saltFlux in FFIELDS.h

[Jean-Michel Campin]

Hi Dimitri,

I'am trying to use z* and realFresWaterFlux with sea-ice.
And for this reason, it seems to me better to separe
the salt flux that is associated with sea-ice formation/melting
(because sea-ice contains salt) from the fresf water flux.
I am just starting the modifications and will not check-in things
soon. But I also wants to use EXTERNAL_FORCING_SURF 
with therm_seaice and the fact it moves to forward_step was
a litle anoying for the moment.
My plan was not to make "big changes" (right now, saltFlux is just
set to zero and that's all) until you give your opinion 
about the saltFlux and see how things can be implemented 
to work with both seaice and therm_seaice.

Regarding the sign convention, I feel a litle bit confused
when the wind stress has the opposite sign of the wind.
(O.K., might be easy to see on a Lat-Long grid, but on the 
cube, it's not obvious to detect immediately on a 6 faces
plot). I think that we can discuss also this point next week,
if its o.k. for you.

And sorry not answering your e-mail (posted on 25 Sept)
but the point is that Alistair always wanted to get rid of
EXTERNAL_FORCING_SURF, so I don't known where we are going.

Jean-Michel

> Subject: saltFlux in FFIELDS.h
> 
> Salut Jean-Michel, I noticed addition of salt flux in FFIELDS.h.
> That's great!  On my to-do list is to modify pkg/seaice to make
> use of this new input field.
> 
> A related issue about FFIELDS.h, that may deserve to be fixed before
> release 2, is sign convention.  Right now about half of the input
> fields (fu, fv, and EmPmR) follow an ocean-centric sign convention,
> i.e., >0 for increase in oceanic variable, while the other half
> (saltFlux, Qnet, Qsw) follow an atmosphere-sea-ice-centric sign
> convention.  From user's perspective it would be nice to use one
> convention or the other, but not both at the same time.
> 
> What do you think?  Is this an issue that deserves to be raised with MIT
> GCM czars, or, given my recent slump in popularity polls, better to keep
> quiet about it, so I don't get shot on arrival next week.
> 
> D.