[CF-metadata] [Glimmer-cism-devel] Standard names for Glaciology and ice-sheet modeling

[Magnus Hagdorn]

snipped list of recipients - it's getting rather long.

On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 11:30 +0200, Jed Brown wrote:
> AJ Payne, Geographical Sciences wrote:

> While it's often handy to have a mask within your code, and to look at
> model output to know what the model is doing with different regions, I
> think the mask may lock us into the current (esp. Glimmer) way of doing
> things.  Distinguishing between slow ice and ice streams is very
> unnatural since it will always be subjective and some models (e.g. PISM)
> do not normally distinguish in this way (solving unified physics
> everywhere).
> 
> As for grounding line resolution, the combination of bathymetry and ice
> thickness provides subgrid resolution where as the mask cannot.  What
> does the mask provide that cannot be reconstructed with an NCO or
> visualization filter?
> 

you are absolutely right, the mask quantities can be derived from other
data. 

However, I think it might be useful to include some way of
distinguishing between floating and grounded ice: I can well imagine
that observations could provide this observation in which case we must
be able to record this.

magi



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