The MITgcm (MIT General Circulation Model) is a numerical model designed for study of the atmosphere, ocean, and climate. Its non-hydrostatic formulation enables it to simulate fluid phenomena over a wide range of scales; its adjoint capability enables it to be applied to parameter and state estimation problems. By employing fluid isomorphisms, one hydrodynamical kernel can be used to simulate flow in both the atmosphere and ocean.

You are welcome to download and use MITgcm.

Papers charting the development of MITgcm can be found here.

**Apologies for the web site glitch – we are now back for at least another decade – Chris!**

2011 MITgcm Research Roundup Word Cloud - Tagul.com

To round out the year we have collected a sample of 2011 research articles that involved MITgcm in some way. The above is a word cloud generated from the citation index that follows… Email missing citations to helen@plume.mit.edu to have them included.

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Dependence of Southern Ocean Overturning on Wind Stress

story by Helen Hill

Image credit: R. Abernathey

Ryan Abernathey is a fifth year Ph.D. student in MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate. His particular interest is in the geophysical fluid dynamics responsible for determining Earth’s climate. To this end, much of his work over the past 3+ years has involved using MITgcm to better understand, in particular, the role of eddies and turbulent processes in the large-scale circulation of the ocean and atmosphere. Most recently, in collaboration with MIT co-authors David Ferreira and advisor John Marshall, Abernathey has been using idealised MITgcm simulations to explore the dependence of Southern Ocean meridional overturning on wind stress. Read the rest of this entry »

A Slippery Problem

story by Helen Hill

Wall-vortex interactions. The nature of the interaction is indicated in the upper left panel, showing north–south velocity V in a plan view. The remaining panels are in the meridional/vertical plane at a distance of 125 m from the wall. Note the classic free-slip results resemble the present parameterization. No-slip is quite different - Source: Deremble et al., (2011).

This month we focus on work by Bruno Deremble (FSU), Andrew McC. Hogg (ANU, Canberra), Pavel Berloff (IC, London) and Bill Dewar (FSU). Deremble and co-authors have been using MITgcm to revisit the problem of no-slip boundary conditions in ocean models. Read the rest of this entry »

Bathymetry and boundaries of the Arctic domain in the model - source Yang et al., 2011

Each month when we consider who to feature next, we encounter more and more scientists from outside the United States and Europe taking MITgcm and using it to persue oceanographic and atmospheric modeling studies. This month we shine light on recently published work by investigators Yang Qinghua (National Marine Forecasting Center, Beijing), Liu Jiping (Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing), Zhang Zhanhai (Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai) and others  who have been using MITgcm to study Arctic sea ice. Read the rest of this entry »