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.

Perpetual Ocean – Ocean surface currents from the MIT/NASA-JPL ECCO2 collaboration as visualized by the NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio

The movie “Perpetual Ocean” from NASA’s JPL – which has been going a little viral over the past few days – shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through December 2007. The animation does not include a narration or annotations; the goal of its creators was to use ocean flow data to create a simple, visceral experience.

This visualization was produced from results of simulations using MITgcm as part of the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean project which involves collaborations between investigators at institutions across the country and beyond .

The high resolution global model attempts to model the oceans and sea ice to increasingly accurate resolutions that begin to resolve ocean eddies and other narrow-current systems which transport heat and carbon in the oceans.The model simulates ocean flows at all depths, but only surface flows are used in this visualization. The dark patterns under the ocean represent the undersea bathymetry. Topographic land exaggeration is 20x and bathymetric exaggeration is 40x.

NASA Scientific Visualization Studio link
MITgcm Facebook Page

Selection of media coverage

Canadian breakfast TV anchors love eddies (April 3)
La Nasa come Van Gogh nel disegno delle correnti oceaniche (March 29)

Bedrock bathymetry (m) in color and water column thickness (contours, 100 m intervals) of the (1/32)◦ (900 ± 30 m) horizontal resolution model. The white contour indicates the ice edge, the white crosses the position of three hypothetical drilling sites - source: Heimbach and Losch, 2012

Ocean measurements near the Pine Island Glacier made in 1994 indicate that the ice shelf extending out over the ocean has been melting and rapidly (Jacobs et al, 2011). More than this, near-shelf ocean transport and tracer calculations suggest that melting of the shelf’s underside has led to the formation and growth of an interior cavity with implications for enhanced further melting and reductions in the extent of the glacier grounding zone – where the ice anchors to the bed rock.

In a new paper, published in the Annals of Glaciology, long-time MITgcm users Patrick Heimbach (MIT) and Martin Losch (Alfred-Wegener-Institute fur Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven, Germany) extend MITgcm’s adjoint capability to investigate the sensitivity of sub-ice-shelf melt rates under the Pine Island Ice Shelf, West Antarctica, to changes in the oceanic state. Read the rest of this entry »

(left) The area of study indicated by the inset, (right) with the gulf bathymetry also shown - source: Biton et al. (2011a)

In three nice papers, Eli Biton (Department of Physics, Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, Haifa, Israel) and Hezi Gildor (Institute of Earth Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem), have been using MITgcm to explore the circulation in the Gulf of Aqaba (Gulf of Eilat), a terminal elongated basin that exchanges water with the northern Red Sea via the Straits of Tiran. Read the rest of this entry »

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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