ice sheets in ESMvaltool

[antony-john-payne]

At a recent ESMValTool we discussed the possibility of including ice sheets within ESMValTool. There is a growing interest in including interactive ice sheets within ESMs and several EU and national projects have objectives in this area (eg, OptimESM, OCEAN:ICE, TerraFIRMA etc). There is also ISMIP6 (the ice sheet MIP within CMIP6), which will continue into CMIP7.

It would be good to start a discussion about how this might be done. One idea for a first step might be to make parts of the ISMIP6 archive of standalone ice sheet experiments available within ESMValTool. This has the advantage that ISMIP6 has already done some of the work in moving the data from native model grids to a standardized grid. We might then start to think about including suitable observations etc.

Uncertain exactly how to take this forward, however Sophie Nowicki and I (co-chairs) and the ISMIP6/7 steering cmt are keen to enter into a discussion.

Sophie & Tony

a.j.payne@bristol.ac.uk

[robinsmith-ncas]

I was talking to Birgit @hb326 at the ESM2025 General Assembly in Grenoble last week, and she reminded me that DLR have a few PMs in that project (WP8/9) to help with evaluation of ice sheet coupling in the project ESMs. I think @antony-john-payne 's plan is a good way to make a start here, and the other WP8/9 lead agrees. If we can join up to make this work I think it could be a win for everyone. @LisaBock, Birgit said you were the person to get involved from the DLR ESM2025 effort?

[valeriupredoi]

great to see this calving along, guys :ice_cube: For anything technical, you can ping me or the entire @ESMValGroup/technical-lead-development-team :beer:

[LisaBock]

Thanks @antony-john-payne and @robinsmith-ncas for starting the discussion! Indeed I could support a bit the process of including ice sheet diagnostics into the ESMValTool in order of the ESM2025 project.

The ISMIP6 simulations which are available on ESGF could already be processed by the ESMValTool. For further native model output there are possibilities to add specific reading and reformatting routines. For some models, this is already available (see Schlund et al., 2023).

But let's start with the ISMIP6 archive. The next steps would be first a definition of diagnostics you are interested in. If they are not already available in the ESMValTool we have to add them. And secondly, we need to add the capability to read suitalbe observations with the ESMValTool. Do you have already a list in mind? We would need to add a cmorizer script for them.

If you haven't done yet the tutorial, I highly recommend it to get an impression about the functionalities of the ESMValTool.