Adding a dynamical cryosphere to i LOVECLIM (version 1.0): coupling with the GRISLI ice-sheet model

We present a coupling approach to and the first results of the GRISLI ice-sheet model within the i LOVECLIM-coupled climate model. The climate component is a relatively low-resolution earth system model of intermediate complexity, well suited for long-term integrations and thus for coupled climate–c...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geoscientific Model Development
Main Authors: D. M. Roche, C. Dumas, M. Bügelmayer, S. Charbit, C. Ritz
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-7-1377-2014
https://doaj.org/article/ef67723266114c4fb0554fcd323db408
Description
Summary:We present a coupling approach to and the first results of the GRISLI ice-sheet model within the i LOVECLIM-coupled climate model. The climate component is a relatively low-resolution earth system model of intermediate complexity, well suited for long-term integrations and thus for coupled climate–cryosphere studies. We describe the coupling procedure with emphasis on the downscaling scheme and the methods to compute the snow fraction from total precipitation fields. We then present results for the Greenland ice sheet under pre-industrial climate conditions at the end of a 14 000 yr long integration. The simulated ice sheet presents too large a thickness in its central part owing to the overestimation of precipitation in the atmospheric component. We find that including downscaling procedures for temperature improves the temperature distributions over Greenland for both the summer and annual means. We also find an ice-sheet areal extent that is overestimated with respect to the observed Greenland ice sheet.