#26 Ocean Cavities Below Ice Shelves

New MPAS-Ocean domains include active ocean cells below ice shelves, in order to investigate the interaction between ocean currents and land ice. Warmer ocean currents may speed up ice shelf melting and retreat.  At the same time, changing land ice fluxes could affect ocean temperature, salinity, and currents below the ice shelf.  Modeling these regions is particularly important because these dynamics are poorly understood, and observations are sparse.

The new sub-ice shelf capability in MPAS-Ocean takes advantage of the versatile Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) vertical coordinate, which tilts down below the ice.  It required the addition of a new pressure gradient formulation, a new mesh initialization, and melt flux calculations.  Testing was conducted in idealized test cases such as the first and second Ice Shelf-Ocean Model Intercomparison Projects (ISOMIP and ISOMIP+), the Marine Ice Sheet-Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (MISOMIP).  Currently, ACME simulations with ice-shelf cavities are being tested with the EC 60-30km and RRS 30-10km meshes.

This poster focuses on the numerical methods required to support sub-ice shelf cavities within the ocean model.  The submission #09 Coupling Ice Shelf Cavities into ACME is on the coupling, mapping files, and interaction between components.