[MITgcm-support] shelficeForcingS addition to boundary layer

[Martin Losch]

Hi Madeline,

as far as I can see, the diagnostics SHIForcS/T (and the same is true for SHIhtFlx, SHIfwFlx) give you the proper forcing by the shelfice, but I agree that it does not tell you where this forcing is applied. For that you'd need to have a 3D field that stores the tendencies due to shelf ice forcing and (that's the idea of this boundary layer parameterization) due instantaneous mixing within the boundary layer (i.e., the contributions to gS/T). The grid is usually fixed in time, so you can easily calculate the tendency terms from eq. 9-10 in Losch(2008) offline, without changing the diagnostic.

Martin

On May 10, 2010, at 9:31 PM, Madeline Miller wrote:

> Hi Martin,  
> 
> Everything is clear except  "the diagnostic does the right thing".
> 
> As you said, because the 'integration' to recover shelficeForcingS from gSLoc for the kth grid cell depends on both k and k+1, the tendency contributed by shelfice (in both S and T) is not very clearly related to the forcing.  So, I agree that the diagnostic is "correctly" computing the forcing, but it is only correct in the sense that it gets the units right and can be simply related to shelficeForcingS.  In the sense of tracking heat and salt contributions though, it is not the right diagnostic to use. 
> 
> Do you agree? If so, I will change the diagnostic to be a little more user-friendly (I suppose that means more friendly to me because I'm probably the only user).
> 
> Best,
> 
> Madeline
> 
> 
> 
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