An unstructured-grid, finite-volume sea ice model : development, validation, and application

Abstract

A sea ice model was developed by converting the Community Ice Code (CICE) into an unstructured-grid, finite-volume version (named UG-CICE). The governing equations were discretized with flux forms over control volumes in the computational domain configured with nonoverlapped triangular meshes in the horizontal and solved using a second-order accurate finite-volume solver. Implementing UG-CICE into the Arctic Ocean finite-volume community ocean model provides a new unstructured-grid, MPI-parallelized model system to resolve the ice-ocean interaction dynamics that frequently occur over complex irregular coastal geometries and steep bottom slopes. UG-CICE was first validated for three benchmark test problems to ensure its capability of repeating the ice dynamics features found in CICE and then for sea ice simulation in the Arctic Ocean under climatologic forcing conditions. The model-data comparison results demonstrate that UG-CICE is robust enough to simulate the seasonal variability of the sea ice concentration, ice coverage, and ice drifting in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent coastal regions.