Elmer/Ice

Open Source Finite Element Software for Ice Sheet, Glaciers and Ice Flow Modelling

Elmer/Ice is a full-Stokes, finite element, ice sheet / ice flow model. The aim of this website is to present the capabilities of Elmer/Ice and to distribute course materials and tutorials.
Elmer/Ice is an add-on package to Elmer, which is a multi-physics FEM suite mainly developed by CSC-IT Center for Science Ltd., Espoo, Finland. Initially started by CSC,  IGE and ILTS, currently multiple institutions and individuals contribute to the development of Elmer/Ice.

Elmer/Ice contribution to initMIP-Greenland

initMIP GRIS

Elmer/Ice contributed to the ISMIP6 initMIP-Greenland intercomparison exercice.

Earlier large-scale Greenland ice sheet sea-level projections (e.g. those run during the ice2sea and SeaRISE initiatives) have shown that ice sheet initial conditions have a large effect on the projections and give rise to important uncertainties. The goal of this initMIP-Greenland intercomparison exercise is to compare, evaluate, and improve the initialisation techniques used in the ice sheet modelling community and to estimate the associated uncertainties in modelled mass changes. initMIP-Greenland is the first in a series of ice sheet model intercomparison activities within ISMIP6 (the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6), which is the primary activity within the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) focusing on the ice sheets. Two experiments for the large-scale Greenland ice sheet have been designed to allow intercomparison between participating models of (1) the initial present-day state of the ice sheet and (2) the response in two idealised forward experiments. The forward experiments serve to evaluate the initialisation in terms of model drift (forward run without additional forcing) and in response to a large perturbation (prescribed surface mass balance anomaly); they should not be interpreted as sea-level projections. We present and discuss results that highlight the diversity of data sets, boundary conditions, and initialisation techniques used in the community to generate initial states of the Greenland ice sheet. We find good agreement across the ensemble for the dynamic response to surface mass balance changes in areas where the simulated ice sheets overlap but differences arising from the initial size of the ice sheet. The model drift in the control experiment is reduced for models that participated in earlier intercomparison exercises.

More information:  Goelzer, H., S. Nowicki, T. Edwards, M. Beckley, A. Abe-Ouchi, A. Aschwanden, R. Calov, O. Gagliardini, F. Gillet-Chaulet, N. R. Golledge, J. Gregory, R. Greve, A. Humbert, P. Huybrechts, J. H. Kennedy, E. Larour, W. H. Lipscomb, S. Le clec'h, V. Lee, M. Morlighem, F. Pattyn, A. J. Payne, C. Rodehacke, M. Rückamp, F. Saito, N. Schlegel, H. Seroussi, A. Shepherd, S. Sun, R. van de Wal and F. A. Ziemen, 2018. Design and results of the ice sheet model initialisation experiments initMIP-Greenland: an ISMIP6 intercomparison, The Cryosphere, 12, 1433-1460. doi:10.5194/tc-12-1433-2018

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Elmer/Ice project © 2020 -- Conception : iGrafic