Gridding the sphere

alt="Your browser understands the <APPLET> tag but isn't running the applet, for some reason." Your browser is completely ignoring the <APPLET> tag! 
Click here to see above animation only

A new feature of the MIT GCM is the novel approach to gridding the sphere. Extending the original suggestion of Sadourney, 1972, who proposed the gnomonic projection, Rancic et al., 1995, proposed the conformal expanded cube to grid the sphere nearly uniformly using a locally orthogonal curvilinear grid.
 
 

Lat-lon grid thumbnail image Here we briefly summarize the limitations of the conventional latitude-longitude grids used in many grid-point atmosphere and ocean models.
Cubic grid thumbnail image A brief description of the cubic grids.
Artic thumbnail image An example of the expanded cubic grids allow us to cover the entire globe, including the Artic Ocean which is sometimes filled in for the convenience of avoiding the converging meridians problem of regular lat-lon grids.
Mapping thumbnail image Some brief discussion about how the cubic grids are implemented.
Splash thumbnail image See what happens when we "splash" a free-surface model. An animation of a simple test of the dynamics on the cubic grid.