Dear CF community, traditionally, the variable sea_ice_thickness from CMIP-type model output was calculated by dividing the entire volume of sea ice in a grid cell by the entire area of the grid cell, independent of the area fraction of the grid cell that was actually covered by sea ice.
This gave rise to substantial confusion for users who expected that sea_ice_thickness as stored within CMIP simulations refers to the actual sea-ice thickness that is used in the sea-ice model code to calculate heat fluxes, for example, rather than the average ice thickness that the ice would have if it were to cover the entire area of the grid cell while conserving its volume. To prevent such confusion in the future, we would like to add the following variable to the CF convention: 1. equivalent_sea_ice_thickness (new variable with units 'm3 m-2' or 'm') to describe sea-ice volume per grid-cell area The term "Equivalent sea-ice thickness" is known within the sea-ice community to refer to "sea-ice volume per grid-cell area". Ideally, we would have liked to suggest a variable name containing the term "volume", but this seems difficult within the CF convention as then units couldn't be 'm'. Thank you very much for any feedback, help and guidance. Best, Dirk Notz -- ---- Dr. Dirk Notz http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/~notz.dirk _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
