Description

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 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.

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.
  

References:

• Greve, R. 1995.
  Thermomechanisches Verhalten polythermer Eisschilde - Theorie, Analytik, Numerik.
  Doctoral thesis, Department of Mechanics, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, 226 pp.
  ISBN: 3-8265-0999-4.
• Greve, R. and H. Blatter. 2009.
  Dynamics of Ice Sheets and Glaciers.
  Springer, Berlin, Germany etc., 287 pp. ISBN: 978-3-642-03414-5.
• SICOPOLIS website: http://sicopolis.greveweb.net/

Copyright

Copyright 2009-2013 Ralf Greve
(with contributions by Reinhard Calov, Thorben Dunse, Thomas Goelles, Philipp Hancke, Nina Kirchner, Sascha Knell, Alex Robinson, Tatsuru Sato, Malte Thoma)

License

SICOPOLIS is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your 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.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with SICOPOLIS. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.