MPAS-CICE: A new Los Alamos sea-ice model for regionally refined model domains

Abstract:

We present MPAS-CICE, the new Los Alamos National Laboratory sea-ice model. MPAS-CICE uses the Modeling for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) modeling framework and has been developed to use variable resolution spherical Voronoi tessellation meshes, which allow regional refinement, as well as regular quadrilateral grids. In the later case the model physics reduces to that of the current Los Alamos model, CICE. While the velocity solver and incremental remapping advection have been written specifically for meshes composed of arbitrary shaped polygons, the model uses the column physics directly from CICE. MPAS-CICE is a component of ACME, the new Department of Energy global coupled climate model.