CICE-Consortium/CICE: CICE Version 6.1.4

CICE6.1.4 is a minor update of CICE6.1.3 from August, 2020. It includes Icepack1.2.4. This release includes a new implicit solver for the VP rheology as well as a couple minor bug fixes in Icepack and in the box2001 forcing case. It also includes a couple changes to the namelists and updates to documentation.

Major changes:

• Add an implicit solver for the VP rheology based on Picard iteration. This is a significant new option for solving the dynamics. It includes several new namelist variables and is triggered by setting kdyn=3 in the CICE namelist. The implementation is documented in the user guide and in the Pull Request. This is an initial version and is still being fully validated. #491

Bug fixes:

• Update Icepack to Icepack1.2.4. This includes two bug fixes. First, an extra and slightly different value for the floeshape parameter was removed. Now floeshape is defined consistently throughout as 0.66. This will change answers slightly but only for fsd cases. Second, the convergence check of Z/L, ustar, tstar, and qstar in atmo_boundary_layer was fixed. This may change answers but shouldn't affect science. #536
• Fix an error in the masked halo update that was introduced in #491. This bug was on master only for 3 days, and it only affects padded decompositions. #517
• Fix computation of stresses used in box2001 forcing by multiplying by ice concentrations correctly. This changes answers but only for box2001 forcing cases. #525, #526

Enhancements:

• Update the verbose log output to improve formatting and fix a few issues #540
• Move sw_redist, sw_frac, sw_dtemp from the thermo to the shortwave namelist. Prior namelist files may not be backwards compatible #540
• Update the timeseries plotting scripts, timeseries.csh and timeseries.py to improve data extraction from the log file #539
• Add floediam and hfrazilmin to CICE namelist #536
• Reintroduce upwind advection. This had been deprecated a few months ago. #535
• Fix undefined tmpstr2 in ice_init #532
• Check additional return codes in the bfbcomp testing tool to improve test reporting #532
• Remove keys_ CPPs. These were being used to define the global MPI communicator inside CICE. The MPI communicator should be passed thru the init_communicate interface instead. This may affect Oasis, NEMO, and other applications. #532
• Add 4 new distinct shortwave variables in the call to scale_fluxes. #515
• Update machine ports. Add -no-wrap-margin for ECCC machines compiling with intel #522. Add machine freya #517.

Documentation

• Add porting links to the quickstart user guide #532
• Add aliases documentation to user guide #532
• Remove CPP keys_ documentation #532
• Add documentation for the implicit vp solver #491
• Fix ice strength documentation #513
• Update sphinx requirements to fix a recent change (pushed directly to the release branch)