SICOPOLIS-AD v1: an open-source adjoint modeling framework for ice sheet simulation enabled by the algorithmic differentiation tool OpenAD

Abstract

We present a new capability of the ice sheet model SICOPOLIS that enables flexible adjoint code generation via source transformation using the open-source algorithmic differentiation (AD) tool OpenAD. The adjoint code enables efficient calculation of sensitivities of a scalar-valued objective function or quantity of interest (QoI) to a range of important, often spatially varying model input variables, including initial and boundary conditions, as well as model parameters. Compared to earlier work on adjoint code generation of SICOPOLIS, our work is based on several important advances: (i) it is embedded 5within the up-to-date trunk of the SICOPOLIS repository -accounting for one and a half decades of code development and improvements -and is readily available to the wider community; (ii) the AD tool used, OpenAD, is an open-source tool; (iii) the adjoint code developed is applicable to both Greenland and Antarctica, including grounded ice as well as floating ice shelves, and with an extended choice of thermodynamical representations. A number of code refactorization steps were required. They are discussed in detail in an Appendix as they hold lessons for application of AD to legacy codes at large. As an example 10 application, we examine the sensitivity of the total Antarctic Ice Sheet volume to changes in initial ice thickness, summer precipitation, and basal and surface temperatures across the ice sheet. Simulations of Antarctica with floating ice shelves show that over 100 years of simulation the sensitivity of total ice sheet volume to the initial ice thickness and precipitation is almost uniformly positive, while the sensitivities to surface and basal temperature are almost uniformly negative. Sensitivity to summer precipitation is largest on floating ice shelves from Queen Maud to Queen Mary Land. The largest sensitivity to initial 15 ice thickness is at outlet glaciers around Antarctica. Comparison between total ice sheet volume sensitivities to surface and basal temperature shows that surface temperature sensitivities are higher broadly across the floating ice shelves, while basal temperature sensitivities are highest at the grounding lines of floating ice shelves and outlet glaciers. A uniformly perturbed region of East Antarctica reveals that, among the four control variables tested here, total ice sheet volume is most sensitive to variations in summer precipitation as formulated in SICOPOLIS. Comparison between adjoint-and finite-difference-derived 20 1 https://doi.an outlet glacier or floating ice shelf that drains an ice sheet). A computationally costly method for deriving such sensitivities might use individually-made perturbations to the bottom melting rate at each location of the ice sheet's base, in particular at its margins that are in contact with ocean water. This means that the ice sheet dynamics must be integrated throughout time for each simulation experiment in which a point-wise perturbation has been applied in order to assemble a sensitivity map across the entire domain to this control v...