Identification

Title

Impact of grids and dynamical cores in CESM2.2 on the surface mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Abstract

Six different configurations, a mixture of grids and atmospheric dynamical cores available in the Community Earth System Model, version 2.2 (CESM2.2), are evaluated for their skill in representing the climate of the Arctic and the surface mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). The finite-volume dynamical core uses structured, latitude-longitude grids, whereas the spectral-element dynamical core is built on unstructured meshes, permitting grid flexibility such as quasi-uniform grid spacing globally. The 1 degrees-2 degrees latitude-longitude and quasi-uniform unstructured grids systematically overestimate both accumulation and ablation over the GrIS. Of these 1 degrees-2 degrees grids, the latitude-longitude grids outperform the quasi-uniform unstructured grids because they have more degrees of freedom to represent the GrIS. Two Arctic-refined meshes, with 1/4 degrees and 1/8 degrees refinement over Greenland, were developed for the spectral-element dynamical core and are documented here as newly supported configurations in CESM2.2. The Arctic meshes substantially improve the simulated clouds and precipitation rates in the Arctic. Over Greenland, these meshes skillfully represent accumulation and ablation processes, leading to a more realistic GrIS surface mass balance. As CESM is in the process of transitioning away from conventional latitude-longitude grids, these new Arctic-refined meshes improve the representation of polar processes in CESM by recovering resolution lost in the transition to quasi-uniform grids, albeit at increased computational cost.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7bk1h7t

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2022-11-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact