Nacho Merino’s paper on iceberg melt over the Southern Ocean has just been accepted for publication in Ocean Modelling. Here is the link.

In this paper, Nacho estimates the Antarctic iceberg freshwater flux with a sea ice/ocean/iceberg model. The simulations have been performed with NEMO, LIM2 and NEMO-ICB iceberg module within DRAKKAR-ORCA025 model configuration.

Nacho has modified NEMO-ICB in order to account for the vertical shear of ocean currents, which he shows improves significantly modeled iceberg trajectories. In result, the iceberg model overall reproduces the observed probability of iceberg presence.

image The above illustration shows the probability of iceberg detection in a 100 km x 100 km grid cell during a year. (a) Observations from ALTIBERG database (Tournadre , 2015), (b) Model results.

Nacho also founds that with few local deviations, iceberg meltwater generally increases sea ice formation around Antarctica. His results therefore underline the importance of improving the representation of Antarctic freshwater sources in earth system models.

image This illustration show the estimated climatology of iceberg freshwater flux over the Southern Ocean in mm/day for (a) summer, (b) autumn, (c) winter and (d) spring seasons.

Nacho further shows that this can be achieved by forcing ocean/sea ice models with a climatological iceberg fresh-water flux. His climatology of iceberg freshwater flux is included in the paper’s supplementary material for use in climate models and described further here.

This is Nacho’s first paper as first author. A great achievement. Congratulations Nacho !

References

  • Merino, N. J. Le Sommer, G. Durand, N. Jourdain, G. Madec, P. Matthiot and J. Tournadre. Antarctic icebergs melt over the Southern Ocean: climatology and impact on sea-ice. Accepted for publication in Ocean Modelling, in press. doi

  • N. Merino’s website which includes a page describing the climatology.