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7.5 Grid Generation

The horizontal discretizations within MITgcm have been written to work with many different grid types including:

  • cartesian coordinates
  • spherical polar (``latitude-longitude'') coordinates
  • general curvilinear orthogonal coordinates
The last of these, especially when combined with the domain decomposition capabilities of MITgcm, allows a great degree of grid flexibility. To date, general curvilinear orthogonal coordinates have been used primarily (in fact, almost exclusively) in conjunction with so-called ``cube-sphere'' grids. However, it is important to observe that cube-sphere arrangements are only one example of what is possible with domain-decomposed logically rectangular regions each containing curvilinear orthogonal coordinate systems. Much more sophisticated domains can be imagined and constructed.

In order to explore the possibilities of domain-decomposed curvilinear orthogonal coordinate systems, a suite of grid generation software called ``SPGrid'' (for SPherical Gridding) has been developed. SPGrid is a relatively new facility and papers detailing its algorithms are in preparation. Althogh SPGrid is new and rapidly developing, it has already demonstrated the ability to generate some useful and interesting grids.

This section provides a very brief introduction to SPGrid and shows some early results. For further information, please contact the MITgcm support list at:

MITgcm-support@mitgcm.org



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