Convection Modeling of Ice-Ocean Interaction

• Main Authors: Gahounzo, Yao, Kopera, Michal
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: ScholarWorks 2023
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctic; Antarctic Ocean
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/rcd_2023/12; https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/context/rcd_2023/article/1011/viewcontent/gahounzo_yao_2023_convection_modeling_of_ice_ocean_poster.pdf

Ice-ocean interaction is an essential component of the Earth's climate system and is one of the key challenges in climate modeling. It has profound consequences for the ocean, such as transforming the water masses through the melting or freezing of ice. The present-day climate models cannot satisfactorily resolve the fine-scale process at an ice face, especially the plume of an order of 10 m that rises at the ice face. We investigate the melting and the plume when vertical ice dissolves into seawater through convection under Antarctic Ocean conditions using the Non-hydrostatic Unified Model of the Ocean (NUMO), a high-resolution model to resolve the plume at the ice face. Three coupled equations have been solved for the ice interface's temperature, salinity, and melting rate. The seawater temperature of 2.3°C and salinity of 35psu are used for the simulation. We saw that the ice melting is significantly governed by heat and salt fluxes to the interface and obtained temperature profiles and velocity components v and w in y and z directions, respectively, in agreement with those obtained in Gayen et al. (2016) with an appropriate choice of the pressure coefficient for the liquidus temperature and seawater viscosity. In this talk, we will present and discuss the results from NUMO and present some of the challenges.