An update on modeling land-ice/ocean interactions in CESM
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
This talk is an update on ongoing land-ice/ocean coupling work within the Community Earth System Model (CESM). The coupling method is designed to allow simulation of a fully dynamic ice/ocean interface, while requiring minimal modification to the existing ocean model (the Parallel Ocean Program, POP). The method makes use of an immersed boundary method (IBM) to represent the geometry of the ice-ocean interface without requiring that the computational grid be modified in time. We show many of the remaining development challenges that need to be addressed in order to perform global, century long climate runs with fully coupled ocean and ice sheet models. These challenges include moving to a new grid where the computational pole is no longer at the true south pole and several changes to the coupler (the software tool used to communicate between model components) to allow the boundary between land and ocean to vary in time. We discuss benefits for ice/ocean coupling that would be gained from longer-term ocean model development to allow for natural salt fluxes (which conserve both water and salt mass, rather than water volume).
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1048817
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-11-00489; LA-UR-11-489; TRN: US201217%%168
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Land Ice Working Group ; January 12, 2011 ; Boulder, CO
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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