An elastic-viscous-plastic model for sea ice dynamics

• Main Authors: Hunke, E.C., Dukowicz, J.K.
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES ;58 GEOSCIENCES; ICE; DYNAMICS; E CODES; VISCOUS FLOW; SEAS; MATHEMATICAL MODELS; PARALLEL PROCESSING; TIME RESOLUTION; ELASTICITY; PLASTICITY; CLIMATIC CHANGE; ice pack; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/390619; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/390619

The standard model for sea ice dynamics treats the ice pack as a viscous-plastic material that flows plastically under typical stress conditions but behaves as a linear viscous fluid where strain rates are small and the ice becomes nearly rigid. Because of large viscosities in these regions, implicit numerical methods are necessary for timesteps larger than a few seconds. Current solution methods for these equations use iterative relaxation methods, which are time consuming, scale poorly with mesh resolution, and are not well adapted to parallel computation. To remedy this, we have developed and tested two separate methods. First, by demonstrating that the viscous-plastic rheology can be represented by a symmetric, negative definite matrix operator, we have implemented the faster and better behaved preconditioned conjugate gradient method. Second, realizing that only the response of the ice on time scales associated with wind forcing need be accurately resolved, we have modified the model to reduce to the viscous-plastic model at these time scales; at shorter time scales the adjustment process takes place by a numerically efficient elastic wave mechanism. This modification leads to a fully explicit numerical scheme which further improves the computational efficiency and is an advantage for implementations on parallel machines. Furthermore, we observe that the standard viscous-plastic model has poor dynamic response to forcing on a daily time scale, given the standard time step (1 day) used by the ice modeling community. In contrast, the explicit discretization of the elastic wave mechanism allows the elastic-viscous-plastic model to capture the ice response to variations in the imposed stress more accurately. Thus, the elastic-viscous-plastic model provides more accurate results for shorter time scales associated with physical forcing, reproduces viscous-plastic model behavior on longer time scales, and is computationally more efficient. 49 refs., 13 figs., 6 tabs.