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 for grounded ice and the shallow shelf approximation for floating ice (e.g., Greve and Blatter 2009). It is coded in Fortran 90 and uses finite difference discretisation on a staggered (Arakawa C) 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.

The coding is based on a consequent low-tech philosophy. All structures are kept as simple as possible, and advanced coding techniques are only employed where it is deemed appropriate. The use of external libraries is kept at an absolute minimum. In fact, SICOPOLIS can be run without external libraries at all, which makes the installation very easy and fast.

Required model forcing:

  • Surface mass balance
    (precipitation, evaporation, runoff).
  • Mean annual air temperature
    above the ice.
  • Eustatic sea level.
  • Geothermal heat flux.

Output (as functions of position and time):

  • Extent and thickness of the ice sheet.
  • Velocity field.
  • Temperature field.
  • Water content field (temperate regions).
  • Age of the ice.
  • Isostatic displacement and temperature of the lithosphere.

How to get SICOPOLIS

The subversion repository of SICOPOLIS is hosted by the GForge system AWIForge of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany.

  • Front page: http://aforge.awi.de/gf/project/sicopolis/
  • Checkout of version 3.1-dev (developmental version, latest revision) with Subversion:
      svn checkout \
        http://aforge.awi.de/svn/sicopolis/trunk \
          sicopolis
  • Checkout of version 3.0 with Subversion:
      svn checkout \
        http://aforge.awi.de/svn/sicopolis/tags/version30 \
          sicopolis

Tarballs (gzipped tar archives):

  • Download of version 3.0 as a tarball (~479 MB).
  • Download of version 2.9 as a tarball (~64 MB).
    Separately: plotting tool SICOGRAPH for version 2.9 as a tarball (~44 KB).

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.

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

Support

  • Mailing list  sicopolis-general <at-nospam> aforge.awi.de  (only for members, subscribe here).
  • Alternatively, please contact  sicohelp <at-nospam> greveweb.net .

Science with SICOPOLIS (selected references)

Bindschadler, R. A. and 27 others. 2013.
Ice-sheet model sensitivities to environmental forcing and their use in projecting future sea level (the SeaRISE project).
J. Glaciol. 59 (214), 195-224.

Robinson, A., R. Calov and A. Ganopolski. 2012.
Multistability and critical thresholds of the Greenland ice sheet.
Nature Clim. Change 2 (6), 429-432.

Sato, T. and R. Greve. 2012.
Sensitivity experiments for the Antarctic ice sheet with varied sub-ice-shelf melting rates.
Ann. Glaciol. 53 (60), 221-228.

Rogozhina, I., Z. Martinec, J. M. Hagedoorn, M. Thomas and K. Fleming. 2011.
On the long-term memory of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
J. Geophys. Res. 116 (F1), F01011.

Calov, R. and 10 others. 2010.
Results from the Ice-Sheet Model Intercomparison Project - Heinrich Event INtercOmparison (ISMIP HEINO).
J. Glaciol. 56 (197), 371-383.

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.

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.

 
Page maintained by Ralf Greve
Last modified: 2013-05-22