Baroclinic ocean response to climate forcing regulates decadal variability of ice-shelf melting in the Amundsen Sea

This dataset provides model output for the 1979-2019 ice-ocean simulations in the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica. The simulation is performed with the MITgcm model at 1/10 degree resolution, including components for the ocean, sea ice, and ice shelf thermodynamics. Atmospheric forcing is provided by ECMWF ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis from 1979-2019. 

Methodology

Bathymetry: Morlighem, M. (2020). MEaSUREs BedMachine Antarctica, Version 2 [Data Set]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/E1QL9HFQ7A8M. 

Values which are identically zero or masked represent the land and ice shelf mask.

Simulations was performed with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model (MITgcm; https://github.com/MITgcm/MITgcm) version 67s, over the Amundsen Sea region (140°W:80°W, 76°S:62°S). Resolution is 1/10° in the horizontal, with 50 levels in the vertical. Bathymetry and ice shelf topography were generated using BedMachine version 2. Initial and boundary conditions were derived from the World Ocean Atlas 2018 for temperature and salinity, and the Biogeochemical Southern Ocean State Estimate iteration 122 for all other variables. Atmospheric forcing is given by the ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis for 1979-2019.

6 Netcdf files:

• state2D.nc
• stateExf.nc
• stateSalt.nc
• stateTheta.nc
• stateUvel.nc
• stateVvel.nc

More information describing the data is included in the netcdf files.

This research was supported by the UKRI-JSPS project NE/S011994/1 and by NERC (NE/V014285/1).