Icepack Recent Changes

Important changes to the code on the master branch since the last numbered release

Date of last update: 7 Nov 2024

By: E. Hunke

Last numbered release: Icepack v1.4.1 (May 20, 2024)

Major Changes

BGC update #497 (updates BGC physics consistent with E3SM, begins deprecation of skeletal-layer BGC, cleans up interfaces, updates bgc namelist defaults and settings in icepack_in and bgc tracer sizing in set_env files)

Bug fixes

Fix conservation issues in the floe size distribution. Changes answers in FSD cases. #495
- Use initial ice and snow volume values at the beginning of the lateral melt routine to update the snow and ice enthalpy as well other tracers for lateral melting. Changes answers in all cases.
- Move the computation of vi0new_lat (lateral growth from FSD) outside of subroutine fsd_lateral_growth and check that the category new ice volume (vin0new) does not exceed the total vi0new.
- Redefine floe_area_c to be precisely halfway between floe_area_l and floe_area_h.
BGC update #497 fixes bug in subroutine snow_redist computation of hsn_new when nslyr=1
Add a check and abort for negative values in the sqrt in computation of Tin in function calculate_Tin_from_qin. #502

Enhancements

Alternative congelation formulation following Plante et al. 2024 #494
Rename two public Icepack subroutines. Backward compatibility was maintained but we urge users to update their drivers to use the new names. #502
- use icepack_therm_shared , only: icepack_init_thermo => icepack_init_salinity
- use icepack_therm_shared , only: icepack_init_trcr => icepack_init_enthalpy
Store static FSD information in Icepack rather than passing it through argument lists; remove fside #495
Update timeseries script plot fonts and titles, add run_testoutput script #490
Machine ports #496, #501, #502