A nested high-resolution unstructured grid 3-D ocean-sea ice-ice shelf setup for numerical investigations of the Petermann ice shelf and fjord

Abstract

Three-dimensional numerical simulation of circulation in fjords hosting marine-terminating ice shelves is challenging because of the complexity of processes involved in such environments. This often requires a comprehensive model setup. The following elements are needed: bathymetry (usually unknown beneath the glacier tongue), ice shelf draft (impacting water column thickness), oceanographic state (including tidal elevation, salinity, temperature and velocity of the water masses), sea ice and atmospheric forcing. Moreover, a high spatial resolution is needed, at least locally, which may be augmented with a coarser and computationally cheaper (nested) model that provides sufficiently realistic conditions at the boundaries. Here, we describe procedures to systematically create such a setup that uses the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM) for the Petermann Fjord, Northwest Greenland. The first simulations are validated against temperature and salinity observations from the Petermann Fjord in September 2019. We provide <p>• Complete bathymetry, ice-draft and water column thickness datasets of the Petermann Fjord, with an improved representation of the topography underneath the glacier tongue. <p>• Boundary conditions for ocean, atmosphere and sea ice derived from a suite of high-resolution regional models that can be used to initialize and run the regional ocean model with realistic geophysical settings.