In ACCESS-ESM1.6, the sea ice component is CICE5 [@hunke2015cice] updated from CICE4 used in ACCESS-ESM1.5.
Scientifically the sea ice model is configured the same as ESM1.5 [@Ziehn2020]. The scientific configuration is summarised as follows:
- Zero-layer thermodynamics [@Semtner1976]
- One layer of snow and one layer of ice
- UM calculates ice surface temperature, and conductive heat flux into the sea-ice
- Ice transport [@Lipscomb2001] and ridging [@Rothrock1975]
- Internal Ice Stress follow EVP [@Hunke2002]
There are significant improvements to diagnostics to support CMIP style diagnostics [@notz_cmip6_2016][@egusphere-2025-3083] natively and error handling.
Like ESM1.5, the OASIS3-MCT coupler is used and the sea ice model acts as the interface between the atmosphere and ocean models. The only significant change to this interface since ESM1.5 is changes to meltwater from Antarctica and Greenland. In all models in ACCESS 1-2 generations, there is no ice sheet model and the snow accumulates over each ice sheet. When the snow thickness is greater than 1100m, the snow volume is added to the river scheme and flows to the coast over a relatively short timescale (~7 days). The volume of meltwater discharge from Antarctica and Greenland is therefore equal to the recent snowfall over each continent. In ESM1.6, this meltwater is partially discharged at the coastline of each continent (to represent ice shelf basal melt) and partially spread in open ocean (to represent melt from icebergs). In ESM1.5 all meltwater is at the coastlines. In addition, the latent heat to melt this water is now taken from the ocean. Meltwater runoff is configured in the input_ice.nml namelist with a prescribed pattern from the lice_discharge_iceberg.nc input file.
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