Sea Ice — MPAS-seaice

MPAS-seaice is E3SM’s sea-ice model, also based on the MPAS framework and running on the same unstructured mesh as MPAS-Ocean.

Relevant zppy tasks

MPAS-Analysis for sea ice

MPAS-Analysis includes a suite of sea-ice diagnostics. These run automatically alongside ocean diagnostics when [mpas_analysis] is active. Sea-ice analyses can be controlled via the generate parameter:

[mpas_analysis]
active = True
# To disable specific sea-ice analyses:
generate = all, no_icebergs, no_landIceCavities

Key MPAS-seaice-specific parameters:

  • mpassi_nml: name of the MPAS sea-ice namelist file (default: mpassi_in)

  • stream_ice: name of the MPAS sea-ice streams file (default: streams.seaice)

Global time series sea-ice plots

The [global_time_series] task can produce sea-ice time series plots when make_viewer = True. Use the plots_ice parameter to specify which sea-ice variables to include.

Notes for MPAS-seaice developers

  • Sea-ice and ocean analyses share the same [mpas_analysis] section. They are differentiated internally by MPAS-Analysis based on the generate list.

  • icebergs and landIceCavities are disabled by default in the standard generate list because most E3SM configurations do not include these features. Enable them if your simulation does.

  • The anomalyRefYear parameter sets the reference year for anomaly plots in MPAS-Analysis. For historical simulations, this is typically set to the first year of the observational record.