Olivé Abelló et al., 2026 dataset - Simulated Antarctic iceberg melting occurs primarily within the Southern Ocean mixed layer

Although iceberg meltwater accounts for nearly half of the freshwater release from the Antarctic ice sheet, most ocean models do not represent the vertical distribution of this meltwater in a realistic way. We investigate the importance of distributing the iceberg meltwater vertically in an ocean model that represents icebergs as Lagrangian particles. Additionally, for more robust estimates, we update the iceberg melting laws, obtaining a substantial increase in average lateral melt and a slight reduction in wave-induced ablation and basal melt compared to the pre-existing formulation. Sensitivity simulations show that even when meltwater is evenly distributed in the vertical down to the iceberg keel depth, 76 % to 87 % of the iceberg meltwater remains injected into the surface mixed layer. Freshwater injection at depth promotes warming and salinification of the Amundsen Sea near the seabed, and freshens and cools the East Antarctic and western Ross Sea continental shelves, but all these changes have a small magnitude. Also, it leads to thinner sea ice and locally enhanced sea-ice production, especially in the southwestern Weddell Sea. The output dataset for the simulations performed in Olivé Abelló, A., Mathiot, P., Jourdain, N. C., Kostov, Y., and Holland, P. R.: Simulated Antarctic iceberg melting occurs primarily within the Southern Ocean mixed layer, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-3422, 2026, is available below. The code developed in NEMO v4.2 will be publicly available in the GitLab repository: https://forge.nemo-ocean.eu/. The zip files include both the 15-year annual and monthly climatologies of the three-dimensional iceberg meltwater flux distribution for each experiment (3SURF, PRE, SLB, 2L1B and 3LAT), covering the entire Southern Ocean south of 52.25°S, both in absolute and normalized terms: • ICB_3Dmelt_SLB.zip: Annual and monthly climatologies of three-dimensional iceberg melt rates from the SLB experiment. Alternative melting parameterisations, with wave-induced meltwater released at the surface, lateral meltwater distributed from keel to surface, and basal meltwater released at the iceberg base. • ICB_3Dmelt_3SURF.zip: Annual and monthly climatologies of three-dimensional iceberg melt rates from the 3SURF experiment. Alternative melting parameterisations, with all iceberg meltwater released at the surface. • ICB_3Dmelt_2L1B.zip: Annual and monthly climatologies of three-dimensional iceberg melt rates from the 2L1B experiment. Alternative melting parameterisations, with wave-induced and lateral meltwater distributed from keel to surface, and basal meltwater released at the iceberg base. • ICB_3Dmelt_3LAT.zip: Annual and monthly climatologies of three-dimensional iceberg melt rates from the 3LAT experiment. Alternative melting parameterisations, with all three meltwater contributions distributed vertically from keel to surface. • ICB_3Dmelt_PRE.zip: Annual and monthly climatologies of 3D iceberg melt rates from the PRE experiment. Pre-existing NEMO melting parameterisations, with all iceberg meltwater released at the surface. For more information, the README file describes in more detail the annual and monthly climatological datasets, including the experiments, variables, units, normalisation procedure, and contact and publication information.