Articles | Volume 8, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-8-1747-2015
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-8-1747-2015
Model description paper
 | 
11 Jun 2015
Model description paper |  | 11 Jun 2015

Finite-Element Sea Ice Model (FESIM), version 2

S. Danilov, Q. Wang, R. Timmermann, N. Iakovlev, D. Sidorenko, M. Kimmritz, T. Jung, and J. Schröter

Abstract. The Finite-Element Sea Ice Model (FESIM), used as a component of the Finite-Element Sea ice Ocean Model, is presented. Version 2 includes the elastic-viscous-plastic (EVP) and viscous-plastic (VP) solvers and employs a flux corrected transport algorithm to advect the ice and snow mean thicknesses and concentration. The EVP part also includes a modified approach proposed recently by Bouillon et al. (2013), which is characterized by an improved stability compared to the standard EVP approach. The model is formulated on unstructured triangular meshes. It assumes a collocated placement of ice velocities, mean thicknesses and concentration at mesh vertices, and relies on piecewise-linear (P1) continuous elements. Simple tests for the modified EVP and VP solvers are presented to show that they may produce very close results provided the number of iterations is sufficiently high.

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Short summary
Unstructured meshes allow multi-resolution modeling of ocean dynamics. Sea ice models formulated on unstructured meshes are a necessary component of ocean models intended for climate studies. This work presents a description of a finite-element sea ice model which is used as a component of a finite-element sea ice ocean circulation model. The principles underlying its design can be of interest to other groups pursuing ocean modelling on unstructured meshes.