Dear CF community,
traditionally, the variable sea_ice_thickness from CMIP-type model
output was calculated by dividing the entire volume of sea ice in a grid
cell by the entire area of the grid cell, independent of the area
fraction of the grid cell that was actually covered by sea ice.
This gave rise to substantial confusion for users who expected that
sea_ice_thickness as stored within CMIP simulations refers to the actual
sea-ice thickness that is used in the sea-ice model code to calculate
heat fluxes, for example, rather than the average ice thickness that the
ice would have if it were to cover the entire area of the grid cell
while conserving its volume.
To prevent such confusion in the future, we would like to add the
following variable to the CF convention:
1. equivalent_sea_ice_thickness (new variable with units 'm3 m-2' or 'm')
to describe sea-ice volume per grid-cell area
The term "Equivalent sea-ice thickness" is known within the sea-ice
community to refer to "sea-ice volume per grid-cell area". Ideally, we
would have liked to suggest a variable name containing the term
"volume", but this seems difficult within the CF convention as then
units couldn't be 'm'.
Thank you very much for any feedback, help and guidance.
Best,
Dirk Notz
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Dr. Dirk Notz
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/~notz.dirk
Received on Tue Jul 19 2016 - 01:53:02 BST
