Testing Components of New Community Isopycnal Ocean Circulation Model

Bryan, Kirk

Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

关键词: Testing;    Water Isopycnal, Thermocline, Isopycnal Hallberg-Him Model, Ocean Model;    Trajectories;    Simulation;    54 Environmental Sciences;   

DOI  :  10.2172/928043
RP-ID  :  DE-FG02-01ER63196-Final
RP-ID  :  FG02-01ER63196
RP-ID  :  928043

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

The ocean and atmosphere are both governed by the same physical laws and models of the two media have many similarities. However, there are critical differences that call for special methods to provide the best simulation. One of the most important difference is that the ocean is nearly opaque to radiation in the visible and infra-red part of the spectrum. For this reason water mass properties in the ocean are conserved along trajectories for long distances and for long periods of time. For this reason isopycnal coordinate models would seem to have a distinct advantage in simulating ocean circulation. In such a model the coordinate surfaces are aligned with the natural paths of near adiabatic, density conserving flow in the main thermocline. The difficulty with this approach is at the upper and lower boundaries of the ocean, which in general do not coincide with density surfaces. For this reason hybrid coordinate models were proposed by Bleck and Boudra (1981) in which Cartesian coordinates were used near the ocean surface and isopycnal coordinates were used in the main thermocline. This feature is now part of the HICOM model (Bleck, 2002).