Ice sheet model SICOPOLIS
SICOPOLIS (SImulation COde for POLythermal Ice Sheets) is a 3-d dynamic/thermodynamic model which simulates the evolution of large ice sheets. It was originally created as a part of the doctoral thesis by Greve (1995) in a version for the Greenland ice sheet. Since then, SICOPOLIS has been developed continuously and applied to problems of past, present and future glaciation of Greenland, Antarctica, the entire northern hemisphere and also the polar ice caps of the planet Mars.
The model is based on the shallow ice approximation, so that longitudinal stress gradients are neglected. It is coded in Fortran 90 and uses finite-difference discretization on a staggered grid, the velocity components being taken between grid points. Its particularity is the detailed treatment of basal temperate layers (that is, regions with a temperature at the pressure melting point), which are positioned by fulfilling a Stefan-type jump condition at the interface to the cold-ice regions. Within the temperate layers, the water content is computed, and its influence on the ice viscosity is taken into account.
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Required model forcing:
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Output (as functions of position and time):
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How to get SICOPOLIS
- Download of current version 2.9 (gzipped tar archive, 61 MB).
- Plotting tool SICOGRAPH (snapshot of 2008-12-17; gzipped tar archive, 42 KB) based on GMT.
Legal notes
SICOPOLIS is free software. It can be redistributed and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at the user's option) any later version. Crediting the author (Ralf Greve) and referencing this web page (http://sicopolis.greveweb.net/) is appreciated.
SICOPOLIS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Documentation
- Quick Start Manual (PDF).
- Overview document "Ice-sheet model SICOPOLIS" @ HUSCAP.
- Version history of SICOPOLIS.
- The source code itself is reasonably well documented.
- A comprehensive manual is not available yet.
Support
- Please contact sicohelp
greveweb.net
Science with SICOPOLIS (selected references)
- Heimbach, P. and V. Bugnion. 2009.
- Greenland ice-sheet volume sensitivity to basal, surface and initial
conditions derived from an adjoint model.
Ann. Glaciol. 50 (52), 67-80. - Greve, R. 2008.
- Scenarios for the formation of Chasma Boreale, Mars.
Icarus 196 (2), 359-367. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2007.10.020. - Vizcaíno, M., U. Mikolajewicz, M. Gröger, E. Maier-Reimer, G. Schurgers and A. M. E. Winguth. 2008.
- Long-term ice sheet-climate interactions under anthropogenic
greenhouse forcing simulated with a complex Earth System Model.
Clim. Dyn. 31 (6), 665-690. doi:10.1007/s00382-008-0369-7. - Greve, R. 2005.
- Relation of measured basal temperatures and the spatial distribution
of the geothermal heat flux for the Greenland ice sheet.
Ann. Glaciol. 42, 424-432. - Forsström, P.-L., O. Sallasmaa, R. Greve and T. Zwinger. 2003.
- Simulation of fast-flow features of the Fennoscandian ice sheet during the
Last Glacial Maximum.
Ann. Glaciol. 37, 383-389. - Calov, R., A. Ganopolski, V. Petoukhov, M. Claussen and R. Greve. 2002.
- Large-scale instabilities of the Laurentide ice sheet
simulated in a fully coupled climate-system model.
Geophys. Res. Lett. 29 (24), 2216. doi:10.1029/2002GL016078. - Roe, G. H. and R. S. Lindzen. 2001.
- The mutual interaction between continental-scale ice sheets and
atmospheric stationary waves.
J. Climate 14 (7), 1450-1465.