<p>From my friends in geosciences I learned a lot about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_circulation_model" rel="nofollow noreferrer">General Circulation Models (GCMs)</a> (for Earth's atmosphere and oceans). I also learned about ice sheet models for floating ice (like sea ice or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_tongue" rel="nofollow noreferrer">glacier tongues</a>), ice on bedrock, as well as (submarine) permafrost modelling. Then, there are also GCMs amended with all these ice models.</p>
<p>I am aware that for model calibration purposes, one sometimes runs the latter GCMs on &quot;snowball Earth&quot; with all oceans being initially frozen. But:
<strong>Have GCMs have been applied to other planets or moons with liquid on or underneath its surface yet?</strong></p>
<p>I consider that rather probable:</p>
<ol>
<li>I did find the <a href="https://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/venus-topography/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">topography of venus</a>, but did anybody run a GCM on that topography with a carbondioxid ocean?</li>
<li>For <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Enceladus</a>, I found some publications about the topography but not the dataset itself.</li>
</ol>
<p>Thinking about adjusting e.g. the <a href="https://github.com/MITgcm/MITgcm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MIT GCM</a> to a new planet or moon, the next  challenge would be to adjust the parametrization to non-water ice or to completely different fluent, I guess. Are there other things I am overlooking?</p>
<p>PS: I am asking in this community as I am hoping that someone might help me out with a general recipe what to take into account when transfering a GCM from Earth to another planet or moon.</p>
<h3>References</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/40239/is-the-water-underneath-europas-ice-cap-potable/">Is the water underneath Europa&#39;s ice cap potable?</a> talks about the salinity of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Jupiter's moon Europa</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/32676/how-would-water-ammonia-oceans-behave?rq=1">How would water-ammonia oceans behave?</a></li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-16T11:31:07.703Z
It's not entirely clear to me what you're looking for. GCMs have certainly been applied to other planets, and also to Saturn's moon Titan. None of those (except Titan in some respects) have "liquid on the surface", and "liquid under the surface" wouldn't seem to be relevant to GCMs. Your best bet would probably be models used for studying the *past* climate of Mars, where a significant ocean and hydrological cycle have been proposed.
Peter Erwin
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-16T11:32:17.617Z
I doubt anyone's tried running a GCM for Venus with a carbon-dioxide ocean, since Venus is way too hot for anything like that.
Peter Erwin
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-16T11:37:17.040Z
About oceans on Venus, I read https://www.space.com/28112-venus-weird-superfluid-oceans.html which is entitled "CO2 Oceans May Have Covered Surface".
B--rian
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-16T11:42:16.810Z
Concerning "liquid under the surface", I expect that there is indeed a (very slow) dynamics of a possible ice shield going on, if we are able to observe [ice volcanos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_volcano) e.g. on Titan.
B--rian
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-16T12:03:51.573Z
OK, that's an interestingly weird idea for Venus; thanks for the reference. (I doubt it would be easy to adapt a GCM model for that, though, since as the article points out the behavior of supercritical CO2 is potentially weird and a bit hard to model.)
Peter Erwin
<planet><exoplanet>
Simulating oceans and ice sheets on other planets or moons?
B--rian
# Simulating oceans and ice sheets on other planets or moons?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-12-15)

From my friends in geosciences I learned a lot about [General Circulation Models (GCMs)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_circulation_model) (for Earth's atmosphere and oceans). I also learned about ice sheet models for floating ice (like sea ice or [glacier tongues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_tongue)), ice on bedrock, as well as (submarine) permafrost modelling. Then, there are also GCMs amended with all these ice models.

I am aware that for model calibration purposes, one sometimes runs the latter GCMs on "snowball Earth" with all oceans being initially frozen. But:
**Have GCMs have been applied to other planets or moons with liquid on or underneath its surface yet?**

I consider that rather probable:

1. I did find the [topography of venus](https://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/venus-topography/), but did anybody run a GCM on that topography with a carbondioxid ocean?
2. For [Enceladus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus), I found some publications about the topography but not the dataset itself.

Thinking about adjusting e.g. the [MIT GCM](https://github.com/MITgcm/MITgcm) to a new planet or moon, the next challenge would be to adjust the parametrization to non-water ice or to completely different fluent, I guess. Are there other things I am overlooking?

PS: I am asking in this community as I am hoping that someone might help me out with a general recipe what to take into account when transfering a GCM from Earth to another planet or moon.

### References

* [Is the water underneath Europa's ice cap potable?](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/40239/is-the-water-underneath-europas-ice-cap-potable/) talks about the salinity of [Jupiter's moon Europa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)).
* [How would water-ammonia oceans behave?](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/32676/how-would-water-ammonia-oceans-behave?rq=1)

**Tags:** planet, exoplanet

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: It's not entirely clear to me what you're looking for. GCMs have certainly been applied to other planets, and also to Saturn's moon Titan. None of those (except Titan in some respects) have "liquid on the surface", and "liquid under the surface" wouldn't seem to be relevant to GCMs. Your best bet would probably be models used for studying the *past* climate of Mars, where a significant ocean and hydrological cycle have been proposed.  
> **username_1**: I doubt anyone's tried running a GCM for Venus with a carbon-dioxide ocean, since Venus is way too hot for anything like that.  
> **username_0**: About oceans on Venus, I read https://www.space.com/28112-venus-weird-superfluid-oceans.html which is entitled "CO2 Oceans May Have Covered Surface".  
> **username_0**: Concerning "liquid under the surface", I expect that there is indeed a (very slow) dynamics of a possible ice shield going on, if we are able to observe [ice volcanos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_volcano) e.g. on Titan.  
> **username_1**: OK, that's an interestingly weird idea for Venus; thanks for the reference. (I doubt it would be easy to adapt a GCM model for that, though, since as the article points out the behavior of supercritical CO2 is potentially weird and a bit hard to model.)  

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## 0 answers

