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1 heimbach 1.1 \section{Model Formulation}
2     \label{sec:model}
3    
4 mlosch 1.2 %Traditionally, probably for historical reasons and the ease of
5     %treating the Coriolis term, most standard sea-ice models are
6     %discretized on Arakawa-B-grids \citep[e.g.,][]{hibler79, harder99,
7     % kreyscher00, zhang98, hunke97}, although there are sea ice models
8 jmc 1.9 %discretized on a C-grid \citep[e.g.,][]{ip91, tremblay97,
9 mlosch 1.5 % lemieux08}. %
10 mlosch 1.2 %\ml{[there is also MI-IM, but I only found this as a reference:
11     % \url{http://retro.met.no/english/r_and_d_activities/method/num_mod/MI-IM-Documentation.pdf}]}
12     %From the perspective of coupling a sea ice-model to a C-grid ocean
13     %model, the exchange of fluxes of heat and fresh-water pose no
14     %difficulty for a B-grid sea-ice model \citep[e.g.,][]{timmermann02a}.
15     %However, surface stress is defined at velocity points and thus needs
16     %to be interpolated between a B-grid sea-ice model and a C-grid ocean
17     %model. Smoothing implicitly associated with this interpolation may
18     %mask grid scale noise and may contribute to stabilizing the solution.
19     %On the other hand, by smoothing the stress signals are damped which
20     %could lead to reduced variability of the system. By choosing a C-grid
21     %for the sea-ice model, we circumvent this difficulty altogether and
22     %render the stress coupling as consistent as the buoyancy coupling.
23    
24     %A further advantage of the C-grid formulation is apparent in narrow
25     %straits. In the limit of only one grid cell between coasts there is no
26 jmc 1.9 %flux allowed for a B-grid (with no-slip lateral boundary conditions),
27 mlosch 1.2 %and models have used topographies with artificially widened straits to
28     %avoid this problem \citep{holloway07}. The C-grid formulation on the
29     %other hand allows a flux of sea-ice through narrow passages if
30     %free-slip along the boundaries is allowed. We demonstrate this effect
31 jmc 1.9 %in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA).
32 heimbach 1.1
33 dimitri 1.10 The MITgcm sea ice model is based on a variant of the
34 mlosch 1.2 viscous-plastic (VP) dynamic-thermodynamic sea-ice model of
35     \citet{zhang97} first introduced by \citet{hibler79, hibler80}. In
36     order to adapt this model to the requirements of coupled ice-ocean
37 dimitri 1.13 state estimation, many aspects of the original code have been
38     modified to permit accurate and automatic differentiation of the model:
39 heimbach 1.1 \begin{itemize}
40 dimitri 1.13 \item the model has been rewritten for an Arakawa C-grid, both B- and
41 heimbach 1.1 C-grid variants are available; the C-grid code allows for no-slip
42 dimitri 1.11 and free-slip lateral boundary conditions,
43 heimbach 1.1 \item two different solution methods for solving the nonlinear
44 dimitri 1.11 momentum equations, LSOR \citep{zhang97} and EVP
45     \citep{hunke97, hunke01}, have been adopted,
46     \item ice-ocean stress can be formulated as in \citet{hibler87},
47     \item ice concentration and thickness, snow, and ice salinity or enthalpy can
48     be advected by sophisticated, conservative
49     advection schemes with flux limiters, and
50 heimbach 1.1 \item growth and melt parameterizations have been refined and extended
51     in order to allow for automatic differentiation of the code.
52     \end{itemize}
53 jmc 1.9 The sea ice model is tightly coupled to the ocean component of the
54 heimbach 1.1 MITgcm \citep{marshall97:_finit_volum_incom_navier_stokes, mitgcm02}.
55     Heat, fresh water fluxes and surface stresses are computed from the
56     atmospheric state and modified by the ice model at every time step.
57 mlosch 1.2 The remainder of this section describes the model equations and
58     details of their numerical realization. Further documentation and
59     model code can be found at \url{http://mitgcm.org}.
60    
61     \subsection{Dynamics}
62     \label{sec:dynamics}
63    
64     Sea-ice motion is driven by ice-atmosphere, ice-ocean and internal
65     stresses. The internal stresses are evaluated following a
66     viscous-plastic (VP) constitutive law with an elliptic yield curve as
67     in \citet{hibler79}. The full momentum equations for the sea-ice model
68     and the solution by line successive over-relaxation (LSOR) are
69     described in \citet{zhang97}. Alternatively, the momentum equation
70     can be solved with an elastic-viscous-plastic (EVP) solver following
71 mlosch 1.12 \citet{hunke01}. In this technique, the evolution equations for the
72 dimitri 1.6 internal stress tensor components are solved by sub-cycling the sea ice
73     momentum solver within one ocean model time step.
74 mlosch 1.2
75     In both cases, the bulk viscosities can be bounded from above (if
76     required for numerical reasons). For stress tensor computations the
77     replacement pressure \citep{hibler95} is used so that the stress state
78     always lies on the elliptic yield curve by definition. Alternatively,
79     in the so-called truncated ellipse method (TEM) the shear viscosity is
80     capped to suppress any tensile stress \citep{hibler97, geiger98}.
81    
82     The horizontal gradient of the ocean's surface is estimated directly
83     from ocean sea surface height and pressure loading from atmosphere,
84 dimitri 1.11 ice and snow \citep{campin08}. Ice does not float on top of the
85     ocean, instead it depresses the ocean surface according to its thickness and
86     buoyancy.
87 mlosch 1.2
88     Lateral boundary conditions are naturally ``no-slip'' for B-grids, as
89     the tangential velocities points lie on the boundary. For C-grids, the
90     lateral boundary condition for tangential velocities is realized via
91     ``ghost points'', allowing alternatively no-slip or free-slip
92     conditions. In ocean models free-slip boundary conditions in
93     conjunction with piecewise-constant (``castellated'') coastlines have
94     been shown to reduce to no-slip boundary conditions
95     \citep{adcroft98:_slippery_coast}; for sea-ice models the effects of
96     lateral boundary conditions have not yet been studied (as far as we
97     know).
98    
99     Moving sea ice exerts a surface stress on the ocean. In coupling the
100 jmc 1.9 sea-ice model to the ocean model, this stress is applied directly to
101 mlosch 1.2 the surface layer of the ocean model. An alternative ocean stress
102     formulation is given by \citet{hibler87}. Rather than applying the
103     interfacial stress directly, the stress is derived from integrating
104     over the ice thickness to the bottom of the oceanic surface layer. In
105     the resulting equation for the \emph{combined} ocean-ice momentum, the
106     interfacial stress cancels and the total stress appears as the sum of
107 dimitri 1.6 wind stress and divergence of internal ice stresses \citep[see also
108 mlosch 1.2 Eq.\,2 of][]{hibler87}. While this formulation tightly embeds the
109     sea-ice into the surface layer of the ocean, its disadvantage is that
110 dimitri 1.11 the velocity in the surface layer of the ocean that is used to
111     advect ocean tracers is really an average over the ocean surface
112     velocity and the ice velocity, leading to an inconsistency as the ice
113 mlosch 1.2 temperature and salinity are different from the oceanic variables.
114     Both stress coupling options are available for a direct comparison of
115     the their effects on the sea-ice solution.
116    
117 dimitri 1.6 The discretization of the momentum equation is straightforward. It is
118 mlosch 1.2 similar to that of \citet{zhang98, zhang03}, but differs fundamentally
119     in the underlying grid, namely the Arakawa C-grid. The EVP model, in
120     particular, is discretized naturally on the C-grid with the diagonal
121     components of the stress tensor on the center points and the
122     off-diagonal term on the corner (or vorticity) points of the grid.
123     With this choice all derivatives are discretized as central
124     differences and very little averaging is involved. Apart from the
125     standard C-grid implementation, the original B-grid implementation of
126     \citet{zhang97} is also available as an option in the code.
127    
128     \subsection{Thermodynamics}
129     \label{sec:thermodynamics}
130    
131     In its original formulation the sea ice model \citep{menemenlis05}
132     uses simple thermodynamics following the appendix of
133     \citet{semtner76}. This formulation does not allow storage of heat,
134     that is, the heat capacity of ice is zero. Upward conductive heat flux
135     is parameterized assuming a linear temperature profile and a constant
136 jmc 1.9 ice conductivity. This type of model is often referred to as a
137 mlosch 1.2 ``zero-layer'' model. The surface heat flux is computed in a similar
138     way to that of \citet{parkinson79} and \citet{manabe79}.
139    
140     The conductive heat flux depends strongly on the ice thickness $h$.
141     However, the ice thickness in the model represents a mean over a
142     potentially very heterogeneous thickness distribution. In order to
143     parameterize a sub-grid scale distribution for heat flux computations,
144     the mean ice thickness $h$ is split into seven thickness categories
145     $H_{n}$ that are equally distributed between $2h$ and a minimum
146     imposed ice thickness of $5\text{\,cm}$ by $H_n= \frac{2n-1}{7}\,h$
147     for $n\in[1,7]$. The heat fluxes computed for each thickness category
148     is area-averaged to give the total heat flux \citep{hibler84}.
149    
150 mlosch 1.12 The atmospheric heat flux is balanced by an oceanic heat flux.
151     The oceanic flux is proportional to the difference between
152 mlosch 1.3 ocean surface temperature and the freezing point temperature of sea
153     water, which is a function of salinity. Contrary to
154 mlosch 1.2 \citet{menemenlis05}, this flux is not assumed to instantaneously melt
155 mlosch 1.3 or create ice, but a time scale of three days is used to relax the
156 mlosch 1.8 ocean temperature to the freezing point. While this
157 dimitri 1.11 parameterization is not new \citep[it follows the ideas of,
158 mlosch 1.3 e.g.,][]{mellor86, mcphee92, lohmann98, notz03}, it avoids a
159     discontinuity in the functional relationship between model variables,
160 dimitri 1.6 which is crucial for making the code differentiable for adjoint code
161 dimitri 1.13 generation (I. Fenty, pers. comm. 2008).
162     %\ml{[ONCE IT IS SUBMITTED, otherwise pers. communcations:]}\citep{fen09}
163 mlosch 1.2 The parameterization of lateral and vertical growth of sea ice follows
164     that of \citet{hibler79, hibler80}.
165    
166     On top of the ice there is a layer of snow that modifies the heat flux
167     and the albedo as in \citet{zhang98}. If enough snow accumulates so
168     that its weight submerges the ice and the snow is flooded, a simple
169 dimitri 1.11 mass conserving parameterization of snow ice formation (a flood-freeze
170 mlosch 1.2 algorithm following Archimedes' principle) turns snow into ice until
171     the ice surface is back at $z=0$ \citep{leppaeranta83}.
172    
173     The concentration $c$, effective ice thickness (ice volume per unit
174 dimitri 1.11 area, $c\cdot{h}$), effective snow thickness ($c\cdot{h}_{s}$), and effective
175     ice salinity (in g\,m$^{-2}$) are advected by ice velocities.
176 mlosch 1.2 %
177     From the various advection scheme that are available in the MITgcm
178 dimitri 1.11 \citep{mitgcm02}, we choose flux-limited schemes, i.e., multidimensional 2nd
179     and 3rd-order advection schemes with flux limiters
180     \citep{roe85, hundsdorfer94}, to preserve sharp gradients and
181 mlosch 1.2 edges that are typical of sea ice distributions and to rule out
182     unphysical over- and undershoots (negative thickness or
183 dimitri 1.6 concentration). These schemes conserve volume and horizontal area and
184 mlosch 1.2 are unconditionally stable, so that no extra diffusion is required.
185 dimitri 1.11 The original 2nd order central differences scheme, which requires additional
186     diffusion, has been retained for legacy tests and for comparison
187     with the newer schemes.
188 mlosch 1.2
189     Finally, there is considerable doubt about the reliability of a
190 dimitri 1.11 ``zero-layer'' thermodynamic model --- \citet{semtner84} found
191 mlosch 1.2 significant errors in phase (one month lead) and amplitude
192 dimitri 1.11 ($\approx$50\%\,overestimate) in such models --- so that today many
193     sea ice models employ more complex thermodynamics. The MITgcm
194     sea ice model provides the option to use the thermodynamics model of
195     \citet{winton00}, which in turn
196     is based on the 3-layer model of \citet{semtner76} and which treats brine
197 jmc 1.9 content by means of enthalpy conservation. This model requires
198     additional state variables, namely the enthalpy of the two ice
199 dimitri 1.11 layers (instead of effective ice salinity), to be advected by ice velocities.
200 jmc 1.9 % \ml{[Jean-Michel, your
201     % turf: ]Care must be taken in advecting these quantities in order to
202     % ensure conservation of enthalpy. Currently this can only be
203     % accomplished with a 2nd-order advection scheme with flux limiter
204     % \citep{roe85}.}
205 dimitri 1.11 The internal sea ice temperature is inferred from ice enthalpy.
206 mlosch 1.12 Again, to avoid unphysical (negative) values for ice thickness and
207     concentration, a positive 2nd-order advection scheme with a SuperBee
208     flux limiter \citep{roe85}
209     is used in this study to advect all sea-ice-related
210 dimitri 1.11 quantities of the \citet{winton00} thermodynamic model.
211 jmc 1.9 Because of the non-linearity of the advection scheme,
212     care must be taken in advecting these quantities: when simply using
213     ice velocity to advect enthalpy, the total energy (i.e., the volume
214     integral of enthalpy) is not conserved. Alternatively, one can advect
215     the energy content (i.e., product of ice-volume and enthalpy)
216     but then false enthalpy extrema can occur,
217     which then leads to unrealistic ice temperature.
218     The solution currently implemented consists in
219 dimitri 1.11 using the sea ice mass flux to advect the enthalpy: this
220 jmc 1.9 ensures conservation of enthalphy and prevents
221     the occurrence of false enthalpy extrema.
222 heimbach 1.1
223 dimitri 1.11 In \refsec{globalmodel} and \ref{sec:arcticmodel} we provide example
224     applications of the MITgcm sea ice model and we exercise and compare several
225 mlosch 1.12 of the options, which have been discussed above.
226 dimitri 1.11
227 heimbach 1.1 %%% Local Variables:
228     %%% mode: latex
229 mlosch 1.2 %%% TeX-master: "ceaice_part1"
230 heimbach 1.1 %%% End:

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