Questions about the output variable "aice"

[judykeystsai@gmail_com]

Hi,

I have some questions regarding the output variable “aice” from sea ice model.
I know it is ice concentration of different categories but where can I find the documentation about how those 10 categories are defined? Are those based on different ice thickness? Also, how do they different from the output variable “ICEFRAC” from CAM?

Thank you

 

[dbailey]

Hi there,The variable 'aice' is the total ice fraction in a grid cell. Keep in mind, this is on the sea ice grid (normally a POP grid). The variable 'icefrac' in CAM has been remapped to the CAM grid, but is otherwise the same quantity. If you are interested in the subgridscale sea ice fraction, this would be aicen??? where the categories are defined in terms of thickness bins. There is documentation in the code (ice_itd.F90) on this, but for reference we use 5 categories in CESM-CICE which are:"For ncat = 5, boundaries in cm are 60, 140, 240, 360, which are close to the standard values given by the first formula."Cheers,Dave