scholarly journals Ice sheet dynamics within an earth system model: downscaling, coupling and first results

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 2003-2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Barbi ◽  
G. Lohmann ◽  
K. Grosfeld ◽  
M. Thoma

Abstract. We present first results from a coupled model setup, consisting of the state-of-the-art ice sheet model RIMBAY (Revised Ice Model Based on frAnk pattYn), and the community earth system model COSMOS. We show that special care has to be provided in order to ensure physical distributions of the forcings as well as numeric stability of the involved models. We demonstrate that a suitable statistical downscaling is crucial for ice sheet stability, especially for southern Greenland where surface temperatures are close to the melting point. The downscaling of net snow accumulation is based on an empirical relationship between surface slope and rainfall. The simulated ice sheet does not show dramatic loss of ice volume for pre-industrial conditions and is comparable with present-day ice orography. A sensitivity study with high CO2 level is used to demonstrate the effects of dynamic ice sheets onto climate compared to the standard setup with prescribed ice sheets.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Barbi ◽  
G. Lohmann ◽  
K. Grosfeld ◽  
M. Thoma

Abstract. We present first results from a coupled model setup, consisting of a state-of-the-art ice sheet model (RIMBAY), and the community earth system model COSMOS. We show that special care has to be provided in order to ensure physical distributions of the forcings, as well as numeric stability of the involved models. We demonstrate that a statistical downscaling is crucial for ice sheet stability, especially for southern Greenland where surface temperature are close to the melting point. The simulated ice sheets are stable when forced with pre-industrial greenhouse gas parameters, with limits comparable with present day ice orography. A setup with high CO2 level is used to demonstrate the effects of dynamic ice sheets compared to the standard parameterisation; the resulting changes on ocean circulation will also be discussed.



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah L Bradley ◽  
Michele Petrini ◽  
Raymond Sellevold ◽  
Miren Vizcaino ◽  
William H. Lipscomb ◽  
...  

<p>The last deglaciation provides as unique a framework to investigate the processes of ice sheet and climate interaction during periods of mass loss as in the current climate. Here we simulate the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) northern hemisphere ice sheets climate, surface mass balance (SMB), and dynamics with the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2, Danabasoglu et al., 2020)) and the Community Ice Sheet Model version 2 (CISM2, Lipscomb et al., 2019). This LGM simulation will be later used as starting point for coupled CESM2-CISM2 simulations of the last deglaciation.</p><p> </p><p>CESM2 is run at the nominal resolution used for IPCC-type projections (approx. 1 degree for all components). The model includes an advanced snow/firn and SMB calculation (van Kampenhout et al, 2019; Sellevold et al, 2019) the land component (CLM, cite) that has been evaluated and applied to the simulation of the future Greenland melt (van Kampenhout et al, 2020, Muntjewerf et al., 2020a,b, Sellevold & Vizcaino, 2020).</p><p> </p><p>Our analysis examines how the global, Arctic, and North Atlantic climate result in the simulated radiative and turbulent heat fluxes over the ice sheets, and the mass fluxes from precipitation, refreezing, runoff, and sublimation. We also examine the simulated ice streams in CISM2, which is run at 8 km under a higher-order approximation for ice flow.</p>



2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 603-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Goosse ◽  
V. Brovkin ◽  
T. Fichefet ◽  
R. Haarsma ◽  
P. Huybrechts ◽  
...  

Abstract. The main characteristics of the new version 1.2 of the three-dimensional Earth system model of intermediate complexity LOVECLIM are briefly described. LOVECLIM 1.2 includes representations of the atmosphere, the ocean and sea ice, the land surface (including vegetation), the ice sheets, the icebergs and the carbon cycle. The atmospheric component is ECBilt2, a T21, 3-level quasi-geostrophic model. The ocean component is CLIO3, which consists of an ocean general circulation model coupled to a comprehensive thermodynamic-dynamic sea-ice model. Its horizontal resolution is of 3° by 3°, and there are 20 levels in the ocean. ECBilt-CLIO is coupled to VECODE, a vegetation model that simulates the dynamics of two main terrestrial plant functional types, trees and grasses, as well as desert. VECODE also simulates the evolution of the carbon cycle over land while the ocean carbon cycle is represented by LOCH, a comprehensive model that takes into account both the solubility and biological pumps. The ice sheet component AGISM is made up of a three-dimensional thermomechanical model of the ice sheet flow, a visco-elastic bedrock model and a model of the mass balance at the ice-atmosphere and ice-ocean interfaces. For both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, calculations are made on a 10 km by 10 km resolution grid with 31 sigma levels. LOVECLIM1.2 reproduces well the major characteristics of the observed climate both for present-day conditions and for key past periods such as the last millennium, the mid-Holocene and the Last Glacial Maximum. However, despite some improvements compared to earlier versions, some biases are still present in the model. The most serious ones are mainly located at low latitudes with an overestimation of the temperature there, a too symmetric distribution of precipitation between the two hemispheres, and an overestimation of precipitation and vegetation cover in the subtropics. In addition, the atmospheric circulation is too weak. The model also tends to underestimate the surface temperature changes (mainly at low latitudes) and to overestimate the ocean heat uptake observed over the last decades.



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Smith ◽  
Pierre Mathiot ◽  
Antony Siahaan ◽  
Victoria Lee ◽  
Stephen Cornford ◽  
...  

<p>In this presentation we describe how models of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been incorporated in the global U.K. Earth System model (UKESM1) with a two-way coupling that passes fluxes of energy, water and the locations of ice surfaces between the component models. Offline, file-based coupling is used throughout to pass information between the components, which is both physically appropriate and convenient within the UKESM1 structure. Ice sheet surface mass balance is computed in the land surface model using sub-gridscale multi-layer snowpacks. Icebergs calved from the ice sheets are fed into a Langrangian iceberg drift scheme in the ocean. Ice shelf basal melt is explicitly calculated in cavities resolved by the ocean model, and ice sheet and shelf geometries are kept consistent in all components. We demonstrate that our coupled model remains stable when simulating changes in ice sheet height, extent and grounding-line position of hundreds of kilometres.</p>



2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 3883-3902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taimaz Bahadory ◽  
Lev Tarasov

Abstract. We have coupled an Earth system model of intermediate complexity (LOVECLIM) to the Glacial Systems Model (GSM) using the LCice 1.0 coupler. The coupling scheme is flexible enough to enable asynchronous coupling between any glacial cycle ice sheet model and (with some code work) any Earth system model of intermediate complexity (EMIC). This coupling includes a number of interactions between ice sheets and climate that are often neglected: dynamic meltwater runoff routing, novel downscaling for precipitation that corrects orographic forcing to the higher resolution ice sheet grid (“advective precipitation”), dynamic vertical temperature gradient, and ocean temperatures for sub-shelf melt. The sensitivity of the coupled model with respect to the selected parameterizations and coupling schemes is investigated. Each new coupling feature is shown to have a significant impact on ice sheet evolution. An ensemble of runs is used to explore the behaviour of the coupled model over a set of 2000 parameter vectors using present-day (PD) initial and boundary conditions. The ensemble of coupled model runs is compared against PD reanalysis data for atmosphere (2 m temperature, precipitation, jet stream, and Rossby number of jet), ocean (sea ice and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – AMOC), and Northern Hemisphere ice sheet thickness and extent. The parameter vectors are then narrowed by rejecting model runs (1700 CE to present) with regional land ice volume changes beyond an acceptance range. The selected subset forms the basis for ongoing work to explore the spatial–temporal phase space of the last two glacial cycles.



2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 309-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Goosse ◽  
V. Brovkin ◽  
T. Fichefet ◽  
R. Haarsma ◽  
P. Huybrechts ◽  
...  

Abstract. The main characteristics of the new version 1.2 of the three-dimensional Earth system model of intermediate complexity LOVECLIM are briefly described. LOVECLIM 1.2 includes representations of the atmosphere, the ocean and sea ice, the land surface (including vegetation), the ice sheets, the icebergs and the carbon cycle. The atmospheric component is ECBilt2, a T21, 3-level quasi-geostrophic model. The oceanic component is CLIO3, which is made up of an ocean general circulation model coupled to a comprehensive thermodynamic-dynamic sea-ice model. Its horizontal resolution is 3° by 3°, and there are 20 levels in the ocean. ECBilt-CLIO is coupled to VECODE, a vegetation model that simulates the dynamics of two main terrestrial plant functional types, trees and grasses, as well as desert. VECODE also simulates the evolution of the carbon cycle over land while the oceanic carbon cycle is represented in LOCH, a comprehensive model that takes into account both the solubility and biological pumps. The ice sheet component AGISM is made up of a three-dimensional thermomechanical model of the ice sheet flow, a visco-elastic bedrock model and a model of the mass balance at the ice-atmosphere and ice ocean interfaces. For both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, calculations are made on a 10 km by 10 km resolution grid with 31 sigma levels. LOVECLIM 1.2 reproduces well the major characteristics of the observed climate both for present-day conditions and for key past periods such as the last millennium, the mid-Holocene and the Last Glacial Maximum. However, despite some improvements compared to earlier versions, some biases are still present in the model. The most serious ones are mainly located at low latitudes with an overestimation of the temperature there, a too symmetric distribution of precipitation between the two hemispheres, an overestimation of precipitation and vegetation cover in the subtropics. In addition, the atmospheric circulation is too weak. The model also tends to underestimate the surface temperature changes (mainly at low latitudes) and to overestimate the ocean heat uptake observed over the last decades.



2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuncheng Guo ◽  
Mats Bentsen ◽  
Ingo Bethke ◽  
Mehmet Ilicak ◽  
Jerry Tjiputra ◽  
...  

Abstract. A new computationally efficient version of the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) is presented. This new version (here termed NorESM1-F) runs about 2.5 times faster (e.g. 90 model years per day on current hardware) than the version that contributed to the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison project (CMIP5), i.e., NorESM1-M, and is therefore particularly suitable for multi-millennial paleoclimate and carbon cycle simulations or large ensemble simulations. The speedup is primarily a result of using a prescribed atmosphere aerosol chemistry and a tripolar ocean-sea ice horizontal grid configuration that allows an increase of the ocean-sea ice component time steps. Ocean biogeochemistry can be activated for fully coupled and semi-coupled carbon cycle applications. This paper describes the model and evaluates its performance using observations and NorESM1-M as benchmarks. The evaluation emphasises model stability, important large-scale features in the ocean and sea ice components, internal variability in the coupled system, and climate sensitivity. Simulation results from NorESM1-F in general agree well with observational estimates, and show evident improvements over NorESM1-M, for example, in the strength of the meridional overturning circulation and sea ice simulation, both important metrics in simulating past and future climates. Whereas NorESM1-M showed a slight global cool bias in the upper oceans, NorESM1-F exhibits a global warm bias. In general, however, NorESM1-F has more similarities than dissimilarities compared to NorESM1-M, and some biases and deficiencies known in NorESM1-M remain.



2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Calov ◽  
A. Ganopolski ◽  
C. Kubatzki ◽  
M. Claussen

Abstract. We investigate glacial inception and glacial thresholds in the climate-cryosphere system utilising the Earth system model of intermediate complexity CLIMBER-2, which includes modules for atmosphere, terrestrial vegetation, ocean and interactive ice sheets. The latter are described by the three-dimensional polythermal ice-sheet model SICOPOLIS. A bifurcation which represents glacial inception is analysed with two different model setups: one setup with dynamical ice-sheet model and another setup without it. The respective glacial thresholds differ in terms of maximum boreal summer insolation at 65° N (hereafter referred as Milankovitch forcing (MF)). The glacial threshold of the configuration without ice-sheet dynamics corresponds to a much lower value of MF compared to the full model. If MF attains values only slightly below the aforementioned threshold there is fast transient response. Depending on the value of MF relative to the glacial threshold, the transient response time of inland-ice volume in the model configuration with ice-sheet dynamics ranges from 10 000 to 100 000 years. Due to these long response times, a glacial threshold obtained in an equilibrium simulation is not directly applicable to the transient response of the climate-cryosphere system to time-dependent orbital forcing. It is demonstrated that in transient simulations just crossing of the glacial threshold does not imply large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere. We found that in transient simulations MF has to drop well below the glacial threshold determined in an equilibrium simulation to initiate glacial inception. Finally, we show that the asynchronous coupling between climate and inland-ice components allows one sufficient realistic simulation of glacial inception and, at the same time, a considerable reduction of computational costs.



2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 343-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuncheng Guo ◽  
Mats Bentsen ◽  
Ingo Bethke ◽  
Mehmet Ilicak ◽  
Jerry Tjiputra ◽  
...  

Abstract. A new computationally efficient version of the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) is presented. This new version (here termed NorESM1-F) runs about 2.5 times faster (e.g., 90 model years per day on current hardware) than the version that contributed to the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison project (CMIP5), i.e., NorESM1-M, and is therefore particularly suitable for multimillennial paleoclimate and carbon cycle simulations or large ensemble simulations. The speed-up is primarily a result of using a prescribed atmosphere aerosol chemistry and a tripolar ocean–sea ice horizontal grid configuration that allows an increase of the ocean–sea ice component time steps. Ocean biogeochemistry can be activated for fully coupled and semi-coupled carbon cycle applications. This paper describes the model and evaluates its performance using observations and NorESM1-M as benchmarks. The evaluation emphasizes model stability, important large-scale features in the ocean and sea ice components, internal variability in the coupled system, and climate sensitivity. Simulation results from NorESM1-F in general agree well with observational estimates and show evident improvements over NorESM1-M, for example, in the strength of the meridional overturning circulation and sea ice simulation, both important metrics in simulating past and future climates. Whereas NorESM1-M showed a slight global cool bias in the upper oceans, NorESM1-F exhibits a global warm bias. In general, however, NorESM1-F has more similarities than dissimilarities compared to NorESM1-M, and some biases and deficiencies known in NorESM1-M remain.



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