Description and validation of the ice-sheet model Yelmo (version 1.0)

We describe the physics and features of the ice-sheet model Yelmo, an open-source project intended for collaborative development. Yelmo is a thermomechanical model, solving for the coupled velocity and temperature solutions of an ice sheet simultaneously. The ice dynamics are currently treated via a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geoscientific Model Development 2020-06, Vol.13 (6), p.2805-2823
Main Authors: Robinson, Alexander, Alvarez-Solas, Jorge, Montoya, Marisa, Goelzer, Heiko, Greve, Ralf, Ritz, Catherine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Antarctic ice sheet
Application programming interface
Boundary conditions
Design
Earth Sciences
Glaciation
Glaciology
Ice
Ice sheet models
Ice sheets
Libraries
Physics
Sciences of the Universe
Sheet modelling
Simulation
Subroutines
Thermomechanical analysis
Topography
Variables
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Description
Summary:We describe the physics and features of the ice-sheet model Yelmo, an open-source project intended for collaborative development. Yelmo is a thermomechanical model, solving for the coupled velocity and temperature solutions of an ice sheet simultaneously. The ice dynamics are currently treated via a “hybrid” approach combining the shallow-ice and shallow-shelf/shelfy-stream approximations, which makes Yelmo an apt choice for studying a wide variety of problems. Yelmo's main innovations lie in its flexible and user-friendly infrastructure, which promotes portability and facilitates long-term development. In particular, all physics subroutines have been designed to be self-contained, so that they can be easily ported from Yelmo to other models, or easily replaced by improved or alternate methods in the future. Furthermore, hard-coded model choices are eschewed, replaced instead with convenient parameter options that allow the model to be adapted easily to different contexts. We show results for different ice-sheet benchmark tests, and we illustrate Yelmo's performance for the Antarctic ice sheet.
ISSN:1991-9603
1991-959X
1991-962X
1991-9603
1991-962X
DOI:10.5194/gmd-13-2805-2020