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Xanthos-Lake Model Source Code

This repository contains the source code for Xanthos-Lake, a lake-modeling extension of the Xanthos framework that introduces a coupled lake component comprising the Xanthos-Lake Snow and Ice Model (xLSIM) and the Xanthos-Lake Water Balance Model (xLWBM). xLSIM is a basin-aware machine-learning model for lake snow, ice, and thermal conditions. It predicts monthly lake ice thickness, snow depth, snow-cover fraction, mixing-layer temperature, and lake ice fraction from meteorological forcing and lake surface-area information. It uses sequence-based deep-learning architectures, including Transformer and hybrid Long Short-Term Memory–Transformer (LSTM–Transformer) models, together with seasonal encoding, multi-lake learning, physical masking, and basin-level cryospheric and non-cryospheric classification. The training workflow uses Ray for scalable execution and includes optional Ray Tune hyperparameter optimization. Model predictions, observations, diagnostics, and feature-importance outputs are written in NetCDF. xLWBM is the water-balance component of the new lake framework. It simulates monthly lake storage, surface area, evaporation, inflow, outflow, and lake–groundwater exchange. It combines physical water-balance equations with calibrated bathymetric relationships, weir-based outlet flow, modified Penman open-water evaporation, groundwater head relaxation, Penman–Monteith snow and ice sublimation, and snow, ice, and thermal conditions supplied by xLSIM. The model calibrates lake parameters against satellite-derived surface-area data, using evaporation-based calibration where surface-area data are unavailable, and supports small, medium, and large lake classes. For large lakes, xLWBM is integrated with the managed-routing workflow so that lake storage and outflow interact directly with downstream river routing and reservoir operations. Together, xLSIM and xLWBM provide Xanthos with a coupled lake-modeling capability. xLSIM supplies the snow, ice, and thermal conditions that affect lake evaporation and snow- and ice-related water exchanges, while xLWBM translates those conditions into dynamic lake storage, surface area, evaporation, and discharge. In return, xLWBM supplies evolving lake surface area to xLSIM. This coupling enables Xanthos to represent lakes as active hydrologic components within basin-scale water-availability and routing simulations.

Machine Learning↗

A nonhydrostatic formulation for MPAS-Ocean

The Model for Prediction Across Scales-Ocean (MPAS-Ocean) is an open-source, global ocean model and is one component of a family of climate models within the MPAS framework, including atmosphere, sea-ice, and land-ice models. Here, in this work, a new formulation for the ocean model is presented that solves the nonhydrostatic, incompressible Boussinesq equations on an unstructured, staggered, z-level grid. The introduction of this nonhydrostatic capability is necessary for the resolution of internal wave dynamics and large eddy simulations. Compared to the standard, hydrostatic formulation, a nonhydrostatic pressure solver and a vertical momentum equation are added, where the PETSc (Portable Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation) library is used for the inversion of a large sparse system for the nonhydrostatic pressure. Numerical results on a stratified seiche, internal solitary wave, overflow and lock-exchange test cases are presented, and the parallel efficiency of the code is evaluated using up to 1024 processors.

3D Poisson equation↗

A nonhydrostatic formulation for MPAS-Ocean

The Model for Prediction Across Scales-Ocean (MPAS-Ocean) is an open-source, global ocean model and is one component of a family of climate models within the MPAS framework, including atmosphere, sea-ice, and land-ice models. Here, in this work, a new formulation for the ocean model is presented that solves the nonhydrostatic, incompressible Boussinesq equations on an unstructured, staggered, z-level grid. The introduction of this nonhydrostatic capability is necessary for the resolution of internal wave dynamics and large eddy simulations. Compared to the standard, hydrostatic formulation, a nonhydrostatic pressure solver and a vertical momentum equation are added, where the PETSc (Portable Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation) library is used for the inversion of a large sparse system for the nonhydrostatic pressure. Numerical results on a stratified seiche, internal solitary wave, overflow and lock-exchange test cases are presented, and the parallel efficiency of the code is evaluated using up to 1024 processors.

3D Poisson equation↗

The Energy Exascale Earth System Model Version 3: 2. Overview of the Coupled System

The Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 3 (E3SMv3) represents the latest advancement in Earth system modeling developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Building upon previous versions, E3SMv3 introduces significant updates across its coupled components to enhance capability and improve fidelity. The atmosphere component incorporates advancements in chemistry, aerosol-cloud interactions, convection, and microphysics. The ocean features a new time-stepping scheme and a higher-resolution unstructured mesh with sub-ice-shelf cavities, while the sea ice model integrates advanced snow and ice physics for more realistic cryospheric simulations. The land model introduces prognostic vegetation dynamics and a new sub-grid topographic treatment of solar radiation. A new tri-grid configuration harmonizes the horizontal grids of the land and river components for improved process coupling. It is enabled by a new non-linear remapping between the atmosphere and land. E3SMv3 underwent extensive testing through a comprehensive simulation campaign, including pre-industrial control, idealized CO 2 experiments, and historical simulations spanning 1850–2024. The model demonstrates significant improvements in simulating the evolution of the historical surface temperature, particularly addressing the “pothole cooling” bias in earlier versions. Reduced aerosol-related forcing contributes to more realistic radiative forcing and better alignment with the observational record. Ocean heat content (OHC) and sea ice trends are also improved as a result.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

High-Resolution Modeling of the Gulf of Mexico using E3SM

Coastal ocean modeling is a high priority in the DOE‘s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). The goal is to accurately predict the risk of damage to coastal resources and infrastructure due to a changing climate in the coming decades. North American coastal communities are areas of particular interest, as this fits under the topic of US national security and planning assessments in a changing climate. LANL Institutional Computing time for the Tier 1 allocation ”Coastal Ocean and Sea Ice Modeling” have been used for development and testing of numerical methods needed for E3SM coastal applications.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

CAMAS 2025: Continuing to Advance Arctic Marine Science

The Consortium for the Advancement of Marine Arctic Science (CAMAS) held its second annual Workshop and Early-Career School in Seattle, WA, on April 15-18, 2025. The workshop attracted 74 participants, including a dozen scientists from Europe (8) and Asia (4). The goal of CAMAS is to facilitate and enhance international collaboration on marine Arctic science, in order to advance the understanding and model representation of key marine Arctic processes that contribute to the rapid changes in the Arctic Earth system. These rapid changes have profound impacts on operations in the Arctic, including those associated with the national and energy security of the United States. The Early-Career School started the event on Tuesday April 15. Thirty-three early-career scientists (postdocs and students) gathered for lectures and discussions on topics like high-resolution Arctic Ocean and sea ice modeling; biogeochemistry of the Arctic; Machine Learning for Arctic Earth system modeling; and an Arctic perspective on geo-engineering.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

2D CFD of lean premixed hydrogen–air flame quenching under locomotive engine conditions

Hydrogen (H 2 ) is a promising fuel for reducing emissions in heavy-duty internal combustion engines (ICEs), but its low quenching distance increases the risk of flame propagation into narrow crevice regions, such as piston-liner gaps. This work uses detailed CFD simulations with finite-rate chemistry to investigate premixed H 2 –air flame quenching in a two-dimensional (2D) region consistent with the piston-liner gap of a diesel ICE. Model accuracy was assessed by comparison with experimentally measured quenching distances in an annular stepwise diverging tube (ASDT). A parametric study was conducted to assess the influence of crevice width (0.05–1.18 mm), pressure (50–150 bar), unburned gas temperature (431–573 K), and equivalence ratio ( Φ= 0.3–0.6). Results show that the critical Péclet number for flame survival is no greater than 3.25, consistent with prior literature, even under ultra-lean and high-pressure conditions (Φ ≤ 0.3, > 50 bar). Additionally, flames with Péclet numbers exceeding 6.15 exhibited front wrinkling, suggesting the onset of velocity-driven instabilities and enhanced flame robustness. These findings help define thresholds for flame quenching in confined geometries and support the safe design of H 2 fueled ICEs.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Rates of Sea‐Level Rise Are Highly Sensitive to Ice Viscosity Parameters in Model Benchmarks

Glacier flow plays a major role in current and future rates of globally averaged sea-level rise. The viscosity of glacial ice, controlling the rate of flow, decreases as stress increases and is highly sensitive to the value of the stress exponent, $n$, in the constitutive equation for viscous flow. Glaciologists and climate modelers almost exclusively assume $n=3$ when modeling ice flow and projecting sea-level rise through forward modeling. However, recent work suggests that $n\approx 4$ better fits observations, prompting the question: How sensitive are projections of sea-level rise to the value of $n$? We use an established community ice flow model and standard benchmark experiments designed as an idealized representation of Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica. While initializing an $n=3$ model to match observations of an $n=4$ ice sheet is possible, we find that incorrectly assuming $n=3$ when in fact $n=4$ dramatically underestimates rates of sea-level rise. The scale of this error grows nonlinearly with the magnitude of the climate forcing, acting to increase projection uncertainties. Additionally, we find that models often account for this stress-dependent rheology mismatch during model initialization in a way that masks this rheological effect in the short term while leaving model outputs vulnerable to larger biases in longer-term projections. Initializations to observations of Pine Island Glacier display similar rheology-mismatch fingerprints to our idealized example.

climate sensitivity↗

CICE on a C-grid: new momentum, stress, and transport schemes for CICEv6.5

Abstract. This article presents the C-grid implementation of the CICE sea ice model, including the C-grid discretization of the momentum equation, the boundary conditions (BCs), and the modifications to the code required to use the incremental remapping transport scheme. To validate the new C-grid implementation, many numerical experiments were conducted and compared to the B-grid solutions. In idealized experiments, the standard advection method (incremental remapping with C-grid velocities interpolated to the cell corners) leads to a checkerboard pattern. A modal analysis demonstrates that this computational noise originates from the spatial averaging of C-grid velocities at corners. The checkerboard pattern can be eliminated by adjusting the departure regions to match the divergence obtained from the solution of the momentum equation. We refer to this novel approach as the edge flux adjustment (EFA) method. The C-grid discretization with edge flux adjustment allows for transport in channels that are one grid cell wide – a capability that is not possible with the B-grid discretization nor with the C-grid and standard remapping advection. Simulation results match the predicted values of a novel analytical solution for one-grid-cell-wide channels.

Lemieux, Jean-François (ORCID:0000000320845759)↗

A high-resolution pseudo-polygon discrete element model for regional sea ice

Here, this work presents a pseudo-polygon discrete element model for high-resolution sea ice simulations. A scale-invariant bonded particle contact model is proposed to model joints between sea ice floes based on the smeared fracture model and a lattice spring beam model, and the Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion is implemented to represent the shearing failure mechanism of sea ice packings under complex loadings. All mechanical parameters of the bond model can be directly determined from laboratory tests. Validations of the proposed model are made by investigations of mechanical response and failure criteria of field sea ice sheets. Compared with the field observations of sea ice from satellite radar and in situ stress sensors, the proposed model is capable of reproducing the typical constitutive behavior and the Coulomb friction envelope of field sea ice. Finally, the proposed discrete element sea ice model is used to study the effect of loading rates on mechanical behavior including failure strength of regional sea ice.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 2000–2300 and beyond: model sensitivity and uncertainty analysis using MPAS-Albany Land Ice

We present a description of the Antarctic Ice Sheet model configuration submitted to the ISMIP6-Antarctica-2300 experiment using the MPAS-Albany Land Ice model, along with three new sets of simulations: (1) a set of extended simulations to 2500 for three forced experiments and to 2775 for the control experiment; (2) a sensitivity analysis of our model configuration to parameters controlling basal sliding and sub-shelf melt, and to model structural choices including the choice of the energy and stress balances; and (3) a 72-member ensemble run on graphics processing units (GPUs) and analysis of variance to determine the primary sources of uncertainty in our ice-sheet model projections. Our extended simulations predict rapid retreat beginning after 2300 for SSP1-2.6 forcing and after 2500 for present-day (control) forcing, primarily in the Amundsen Sea Embayment. We find that varying the sub-shelf melt parameter between the 5th to 95th percentile values for a mean-Antarctic calibration target results in an up to ∼ ± 40 % change in sea-level contribution relative to our baseline simulations that used the median value. Using a linear basal sliding law reduces sea-level contribution by 51 %–73 % relative to our baseline nonlinear sliding law with an exponent of 1/5. When using basal sliding law exponents of 1/3 and 1/10, the overall difference from our baseline simulations at 2300 is on the order of 10 %. The Amundsen Sea Embayment region displays a strongly non-linear dependence of mass loss on the sliding law exponent, with no discernible relationship between the sliding law exponent and the mass loss by 2300, while the sectors feeding the Ross and Filchner-Ronne ice shelves exhibit more mass loss with a more-plastic sliding law. Our model fidelity sensitivity experiments reveal a 9 %–31 % increase in sea-level contribution when using a depth-integrated stress balance approximation relative to our three-dimensional solver, while using a fixed-in-time temperature field increases sea-level contribution by 14 %–88 % relative to two thermomechanically coupled configurations. Our 72-member ensemble and analysis of variance show that the uncertainty in long-term projections is dominated by the choice of Earth system model forcing and the presence or absence of hydrofracture forcing, rather than uncertainty in sliding and sub-shelf melt parameters.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Ice storage model-predictive control in an office building with PV: scenario, error and sensitivity analysis

Thermal energy storage (TES) can enable more building-sited renewable electricity generation and lower utility bill costs for buildings owners and occupants, especially when there are high demand and variable time-of-use (TOU) charges. A model predictive control (MPC) strategy can offer additional savings over a schedule-based control with added complexity and reliance on forecasts. Here, this study examines savings for medium office buildings with chiller plants in three locations with building-installed solar photovoltaics (PV) to understand the impact of MPC. Control setpoints are fixed by a schedule-based control or optimized by nonlinear MPC. These control setpoints are actuated within EnergyPlus building models to simulate the utility cost of the chiller plant. NLP solutions can be unstable or unrealistic, but our results show that by regularizing the NLP, the solutions can be reasonably followed by the building model. MPC models make simplifications that lead to errors once the controller is participating in and changing the operation of the building. These errors average 9 % across the cases, showing that the most important parts of the system are represented. The no-thermal load costs are computed to show that the optimization can in some cases achieve both the minimum TOU and minimum monthly demand costs by demand management while reducing TOU energy costs by energy arbitrage. The MPC saves 35–66 % in the annual chiller plant operating costs, which is an additional savings above the schedule by 1–33 %. PV and TES are complementary and mostly independent, but a load with PV often results in better performance for the schedule. Our case study and sensitivity analysis show the importance of modeling and optimization for complex rates, but also the circumstances wherein a simpler strategy achieves the same performance with less potential for error.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Probabilistic projections of the Amery Ice Shelf catchment, Antarctica, under conditions of high ice-shelf basal melt

Abstract. Antarctica's Lambert Glacier drains about one-sixth of the ice from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and is considered stable due to the strong buttressing provided by the Amery Ice Shelf. While previous projections of the sea-level contribution from this sector of the ice sheet have predicted significant mass loss only with near-complete removal of the ice shelf, the ocean warming necessary for this was deemed unlikely. Recent climate projections through 2300 indicate that sufficient ocean warming is a distinct possibility after 2100. This work explores the impact of parametric uncertainty on projections of the response of the Lambert–Amery system (hereafter “the Amery sector”) to abrupt ocean warming through Bayesian calibration of a perturbed-parameter ice-sheet model ensemble. We address the computational cost of uncertainty quantification for ice-sheet model projections via statistical emulation, which employs surrogate models for fast and inexpensive parameter space exploration while retaining critical features of the high-fidelity simulations. To this end, we build Gaussian process (GP) emulators from simulations of the Amery sector at a medium resolution (4–20 km mesh) using the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS)-Albany Land Ice (MALI) model. We consider six input parameters that control basal friction, ice stiffness, calving, and ice-shelf basal melting. From these, we generate 200 perturbed input parameter initializations using space filling Sobol sampling. For our end-to-end probabilistic modeling workflow, we first train emulators on the simulation ensemble and then calibrate the input parameters using observations of the mass balance, grounding line movement, and calving front movement with priors assigned via expert knowledge. Next, we use MALI to project a subset of simulations to 2300 using ocean and atmosphere forcings from a climate model for both low- and high-greenhouse-gas-emission scenarios. From these simulation outputs, we build multivariate emulators by combining GP regression with principal component dimension reduction to emulate multivariate sea-level contribution time series data from the MALI simulations. We then use these emulators to propagate uncertainty from model input parameters to predictions of glacier mass loss through 2300, demonstrating that the calibrated posterior distributions have both greater mass loss and reduced variance compared to the uncalibrated prior distributions. Parametric uncertainty is large enough through about 2130 that the two projections under different emission scenarios are indistinguishable from one another. However, after rapid ocean warming in the first half of the 22nd century, the projections become statistically distinct within decades. Overall, this study demonstrates an efficient Bayesian calibration and uncertainty propagation workflow for ice-sheet model projections and identifies the potential for large sea-level rise contributions from the Amery sector of the Antarctic Ice Sheet after 2100 under high-greenhouse-gas-emission scenarios.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Improved modeling of in-ice particle showers for IceCube event reconstruction

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory relies on an array of photomultiplier tubes to detect Cherenkov light produced by charged particles in the South Pole ice. IceCube data analyses depend on an in-depth characterization of the glacial ice, and on novel approaches in event reconstruction that utilize fast approximations of photoelectron yields. Here, a more accurate model is derived for event reconstruction that better captures our current knowledge of ice optical properties. When evaluated on a Monte Carlo simulation set, the median angular resolution for in-ice particle showers improves by over a factor of three compared to a reconstruction based on a simplified model of the ice. The most substantial improvement is obtained when including effects of birefringence due to the polycrystalline structure of the ice. When evaluated on data classified as particle showers in the high-energy starting events sample, a significantly improved description of the events is observed.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Permafrost Thaw, Uneven Subsidence and Projected Drying of Ice-wedge Polygon Tundra: Modeling Archive

This dataset is a model archive of the paper Permafrost Thaw, Uneven Subsidence and Projected Drying of Ice-wedge Polygon Tundra (in prep) to support a modeling study investigating how projected increases in Arctic temperature and precipitation will jointly influence hydrologic conditions in ice-rich tundra landscapes. With this dataset, this study is to address the research question: Will Arctic tundra landscapes become wetter or drier with increasing precipitation and temperature in the future when thaw-induced ground subsidence and associated microtopographic evolution are represented? The simulations focus on ice-wedge polygon tundra, a widespread form of ice-rich permafrost terrain that is highly sensitive to thaw-driven landscape change. This dataset contains model input and output data for four study watersheds in Alaska: Anaktuvuk, Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Brooks Foothills, and Prudhoe Bay. Simulations were performed using the Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS, v1.5), a physics-rich integrated surface–subsurface hydrologic model. For each watershed, ten modeling cases were performed representing two landscape evolution conditions (with subsidence and without subsidence) combined with five climate forcing scenarios derived from Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP5, SSP5 with precipitation trend, SSP2, SSP2 with precipitation trend, and SSP2 with double precipitation trend). Particularly, for each watershed under the forcing SSP2 with precipitation trend, there are two additional simulations considering spatially heterogeneous subsidence distributions: one assumes randomly distributed scaling and the other includes elevation dependent distribution scaling. These simulations span 1980–2099 and include spin-up runs (1980–2009) followed by transient projections (2010–2099). To facilitate reproducibility of simulations, all datasets are organized by watershed. For each study watershed, the dataset contains: (1) Pre-partitioned mesh files for 32-core modeling (.par.32.XX), located in EACH_WATERSHED/mesh/basin; and also a non-partitioned mesh file (.exo) located in EACH_WATERSHED/mesh; (2) Climate forcings corresponding to the five SSP scenarios (.h5), located in EACH_WATERSHED/data; (3) Final states (.h5) from column spin-up modeling used to initialize historical watershed-scale spin-up runs from 1980 to 2009, located in EACH_WATERSHED/PreSpinupHistorical; (4) Final states (.h5) of historical watershed-scale spin-up runs from 1980 to 2009 used to initialize projection runs, located in EACH_WATERSHED/Spinup_daymetERA5; (5) ATS modeling input files (.xml), located in EACH_WATERSHED/EACH_SIMULATION_SCENARIO/inputfiles; (6) ATS modeling output files (.dat), located in in EACH_WATERSHED/EACH_SIMULATION_SCENARIO/combined_obs; (7) For the Brooks Foothills watershed, additional spatial model outputs are provided (.h5) for selected years (2033 and 2093) used to generate spatial figures in this study, located in Brooksfoothills/EACH_SIMULATION_SCENARIO/results-WITH/WITHOUT_SUBSIDENCE-year2033/2093. All data files with suffix .h5 can be accessible through Python h5py, and all data files with suffix of .dat can be imported by Python pandas. Mesh file with .exo can be visualized through Paraview or read by Python netCDF. The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments in the Arctic (NGEE Arctic) project is a research effort to reduce uncertainty in the Department of Energy’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) by developing a predictive understanding of Arctic tundra ecosystems underlain by permafrost and to quantify feedbacks from the Arctic tundra to the Earth system. NGEE Arctic is supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research. Over Phases 1–3, observations made by the NGEE Arctic team across a gradient of permafrost landscapes in Arctic Alaska improved the representation of tundra processes in the land surface component of E3SM (the E3SM Land Model, ELM). Model improvements emphasized unique aspects of permafrost environments and explored reductions in model complexity while retaining predictive power. The Arctic-informed ELM developed by NGEE Arctic has been used to make novel predictions on processes ranging from permafrost thaw to soil biogeochemical cycling to Earth system feedbacks associated with the unique characteristics of tundra plants. In Phase 4, the NGEE Arctic team is evaluating our new predictive understanding under novel conditions across the Arctic domain. In collaboration with partners at long-term pan-Arctic research sites we are examining whether an Arctic-informed ELM can faithfully simulate interactions among surface and subsurface processes at site, regional, and pan-Arctic scales. In turn, we are using variety of tools to dynamically extend and evaluate ELM inference, with an emphasis on data synthesis and pan-Arctic model evaluation, reintegration of code with an evolving E3SM, scaling across heterogeneous Arctic landscapes, and the appropriate representation of the impacts of increasingly frequent Arctic disturbances.

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > PRECIPITATION↗

E3SMv3 ‘Nephele’ Perturbed Parameter Ensemble Value-Added Product for ENA, SGP, NSA, and Global Means

Processed output from the E3SMv3 Nephele perturbed parameter ensemble (PPE). This product contains global means of present-day (using 2010 aerosol forcings) and preindustrial (using 1850 aerosol forcings) monthly and daily global-mean quantities, as well as hourly mean quantities at the E3SMv3 model grid cell closest to the ENA, SGP, and NSA ARM sites. In this PPE, the E3SMv3 model was run for 27 months in an atmosphere-only configuration with free tropospheric winds nudged to reanalysis. Each ensemble member represents a unique combination of 25 model parameter values (in the microphysics, convective microphysics, and aerosol schemes) that were perturbed randomly and simultaneously. The E3SMv3 default configuration is included as member 0. See https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.174907165.57104591/v1 (in review) for more information on the Nephele PPE and the perturbed parameters.

Model atmospheric temperature↗