CICE-Consortium
Published January 22, 2026 | Version 6.6.3
Software Open

CICE-Consortium/CICE: CICE Version 6.6.3

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • 2. Naval Research Laboratory Stennis Space Center
  • 3. National Center for Atmospheric Research
  • 4. Environment and Climate Change Canada
  • 5. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (CTR)
  • 6. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
  • 7. Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences
  • 8. Intel Corporation
  • 9. Danish Meteorological Institute
  • 10. Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholz-Zentrum fur Polar- und Meersforschung
  • 11. Australian Earth-System Simulator
  • 12. EDMO icon Florida State University, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies
  • 13. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
  • 14. National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Description

CICE6.6.3 is a minor update from CICE6.6.2 from August, 2025 and includes Icepack1.5.3.

This release is being done primarily to update the CMIP history output fields including documentation of the CICE averaging process. There are also important updates to residual ice handling, an update to allow coupling with external wave height, a new data assimilation feature for ice concentration at model initialization from a restart file, a history restart capability, and several updates as the consortium works toward supporting regional models and new boundary conditions. Some of these updates change answers.

Major Changes

  • #1060 Add a data assimilation capability for ice concentration at initialization. Read an ice concentration field and update related fields at initialization after reading a restart file.
  • #1067 Update removal of residual ice. Add itd_area_min and itd_mass_min Icepack parameters to control residual ice thresholds. Update Icepack. THIS CHANGES ANSWERS

Bug fixes

  • #1089 Update Icepack to #daa41638c6cef, enforce minimum snow grain radius. THIS CHANGES ANSWERS for configurations using prognostic snow grain radius
  • bd30d63 Fix bug in ice restoring indices. THIS CHANGES ANSWERS for ice restoring configurations

Enhancements

  • #1054, #1066, #1088 Update CMIP output, add several history variables, update calculation of several output variables, update control of CMIP history output. Update Icepack to fix Tsnice calculation.
  • #1071 Add option to pass significant wave height into Icepack for FSD computation. Update Icepack.
  • #1062 Update outer boundary condition implementation as a step towards supporting open boundary conditions. Update HaloUpdate, HaloExtrapolate, restart_ext implementation, namelist options, and unit tests as needed. These changes are bit-for-bit.
  • #1069 Add history restart capability.
  • #1079 Add ability to read an extended grid in support of regional modelling and open boundary conditions.
  • #1050 Update Boreas port
  • #1076 Update Carpenter port
  • #1052 Update job completion checking script for automated testing
  • #1031 Support restart pointer files with datestamps

Documentation

  • #1056 Add significant documentation to describe the CICE averaging implementation.
  • #1086 Update version number, Update Icepack to #0bcde255637a594

Files

CICE-Consortium/CICE-CICE6.6.3.zip

Files (12.7 MB)

Name Size Download all
md5:232ff59c8e3478d89eceab516308027a
12.7 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
10.5281/zenodo.1205674 (DOI)
Is supplement to
https://github.com/CICE-Consortium/CICE/tree/CICE6.0.1 (URL)

Software

Repository URL
https://github.com/CICE-Consortium/CICE