[MITgcm-devel] Add sea ice surface forcing to pkg/seaice

[Dimitris Menemenlis]

Torge, thank you for comments.  Yes, we can specify freshwater sea ice.

Martin, the kind of event that we would like to model is this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40292774/IGS/KNS_9_2_2010_calving.mov
And to first order what we are interested in is the heat and freshwater contribution,
not the detailed sea ice dynamics, which would be hopelessly complicated.

So I think I will go ahead and add.

Dimitris Menemenlis

On Apr 19, 2012, at 9:10 AM, Torge Martin wrote:

> In general Martin is right, I think. However, for two reasons Dimitri's approach seems to be a reasonable simple solution for now: 
> 1) MITgcm does not have an iceberg model component, for example as described in Martin & Adcroft, 2010 ;-) 
> but
> 2) MITgcm's sea ice model features variable salinity, right? 
> 
> So, to first order icebergs, in particular "small" ice blocks (not giant tabular icebergs) feel basically the same dynamic forcing as sea ice, i.e. wind, ocean currents and some internal stress when locked in the sea ice cover/ice melange in front of an outlet glacier. There is no harm to let this land ice drift with the sea ice. We just need to consider that glacier ice is freshwater and hence reduces the average salinity of the "sea ice" in any grid cell where the calving flux enters the ocean grid. 
> 
> Yes, the glacier ice would probably melt at a different rate than the surrounding sea ice but melting of (small) icebergs is not well understood nor constrained by observations, yet. 
> 
> -Torge 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 11:15 PM, Martin Losch <Martin.Losch at awi.de> wrote:
> A piece of a tidewater glacier is not sea-ice but an ice-berg, is it? Different structure, different salinity, etc. does it really make sense to add this type of ice to sea-ice, which is a quasi-continuous medium? I am not sure if this a sensible thing to do.
> 
> Martin
> 
> On Apr 18, 2012, at 8:16 PM, Menemenlis, Dimitris (3248) wrote:
> 
> > I plan to add capability to "add" sea ice to pkg/seaice as a surface forcing, e.g., as would happen when a tidewater glacier collapses.
> >
> > Any objections, suggestions, requests?  Maybe capability is already partly or fully there? I haven't looked at seaice code in some time.
> >
> > Dimitris Menemenlis
> > 818-625-6498
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> 
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