On the discretization of the ice thickness distribution  in the  NEMO3.6-LIM3 global ocean–sea ice model

Massonnet, François; Barthélemy, Antoine; Worou, Koffi; Fichefet, Thierry; Vancoppenolle, Martin; Rousset, Clément; Moreno-Chamarro, Eduardo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3745-2019

Articles | Volume 12, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3745-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean - NEMO

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3745-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 8

Model evaluation paper

|

27 Aug 2019

Model evaluation paper |

| 27 Aug 2019

On the discretization of the ice thickness distribution in the NEMO3.6-LIM3 global ocean–sea ice model

François Massonnet, Antoine Barthélemy, Koffi Worou, Thierry Fichefet, Martin Vancoppenolle, Clément Rousset, and Eduardo Moreno-Chamarro

Model code and software

Access to software, data and code F. Massonnet, A. Barthélemy, K. Worou, T. Fichefet, M. Vancoppenolle, C. Rousset, and E. Moreno-Chamarro https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3345604

Short summary

Sea ice thickness varies considerably on spatial scales of several meters. However, contemporary climate models cannot resolve such scales yet. This is why sea ice models used in climate models include an ice thickness distribution (ITD) to account for this unresolved variability. Here, we explore with the ocean–sea ice model NEMO3.6-LIM3 the sensitivity of simulated mean Arctic and Antarctic sea ice states to the way the ITD is discretized.