How does CICE work in standalone CAM 5.3 run

[sbasu@iarc_uaf_edu]

Hi,When I am running standalone CAM 5.3 along with CAM history files the model is producing CICE history files too. In the CICE component history files there is "grid cell mean ice thickness" variable. In the previous version (for example : CAM 3) the thickness used to be constant. In this standalone version of CAM 5.3 how can the model calculate sea ice thickness unless it is fully coupled with CICE model?

Does this model calculated thickenss affects the monthly prescribed sea ice forcings at each grid point?

Thanks,

Soumik

 

[dbailey]

The sea ice thickness is still constant, but since the concentration (fraction) evolves from the data read in then the quanitity "hi" on the CICE history files is actually:hi = aice * mean thicknessThe label is confusing I agree. In the ice community we refer to this as volume because you simply multply hi by the cross-sectional gridcell area to get the real volume. If you look at hi/aice you will see that this is constant. Everything else about the ice state like snow depth, ice surface temperature, etc is prognostic.Dave

 

[dbailey]

The sea ice thickness is still constant, but since the concentration (fraction) evolves from the data read in then the quanitity "hi" on the CICE history files is actually:hi = aice * mean thicknessThe label is confusing I agree. In the ice community we refer to this as volume because you simply multply hi by the cross-sectional gridcell area to get the real volume. If you look at hi/aice you will see that this is constant. Everything else about the ice state like snow depth, ice surface temperature, etc is prognostic.Dave

 

[sbasu@iarc_uaf_edu]

Thank you so much. Soumik

 

[sbasu@iarc_uaf_edu]

Thank you so much. Soumik