[MITgcm-support] shortwave, water type and calendar package

[Martin Losch]

Hi,
I am trying to run the MITgcm with dynamic seaice and climatological 
forcing (12 monthly mean records). All sorts of problem pop up but most 
prominently the model stalls with an address error in swfrac.F. The 
reason is that with seaice you need the exf-package and consequently 
the cal-package; then swfrac calls cal_getMonthsRec, which for my 
parameter settings (theCalendar='model') screws up and returns 
count0=0, so that the statement jwtype=jerl(count0) is not defined 
(jerl is defined as "integer jerl(12)", so count0 should range from 1 
to 12).
Now, I could go ahead and check, why cal_getMonthsRec gives the wrong 
answer (and I will try to do that, but mainly because this routine also 
screws up in different place). But before I do that I would like 
someone to explain to my why jerl (which obviously has to do with 12 
months) is a globally uniform constant. Does the water type (and 
consequently the absorption properties of sea water) change uniformly 
over the globe over the year? Hard to believe, but I have to admit that 
I don't know much about this water type business.
I would think that I would make more sense to remove the call to 
cal_getMonthsRec from swfrac by default and have the water type be a 
global constant. If someone wants to include some dependence on the 
season (I guess biological production is a candidate that could change 
the water type), it can be done for the specific problem.
Any thoughts on this? Where am I wrong?

Martin