The NCAR CSM Sea Ice Model

• Main Authors: Bettge, Thomas, Weatherly, John, Washington, Warren, Pollard, David, Briegleb, Bruce, Strand, Warren
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: UCAR/NCAR 1996
• Subjects: Sea ice model; Climate model system; Pollard; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5065/d60c4spq; http://opensky.ucar.edu/islandora/object/technotes:192

The purpose of this report is to document the details of the governing equations and physical parameterizations of the sea ice model component in the first version of the NCAR Climate System Model (CSM). It should be noted that this model is very similar to the sea ice component used by Washington and Meehl (1996a, 1996b) in a fully coupled model of the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice. Many of the thermodynamic ice growth and melt processes are taken from previous work, namely Semtner (1976), Parkinson and Washington (1979), Harvey (1988), and Pollard and Thompson (1994). Ice dynamics are based upon the cavitating fluid solution described by Flato and Hibler (1990, 1992), and used by Pollard and Thompson (1994), where the shear and tensile strength of the ice are neglected and the compressive strength is used to iterate to a representative ice velocity each timestep.