Med Modeling

Reporting by Helen Hill for MITgcm

The Regional Earth System Model RegCM-ES, has been developed and maintained in the Earth System Physics section of the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, and represents a modeling tool adaptable to a wide range of applications in regional climate modeling studies.

In a paper in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems last year, the researchers Marco Reale (OGS-ICTP), Filippo Giorgi (ICTP), Cosimo Solidoro (OGS), Valeria Di Biagio (OGS), Fabio Di Sante (ICTP), Laura Mariotti (OGS), Riccardo Farneti (ICTP) and Gianmaria Sannino (ENEA) describe a new version of RegCM-ES and assess its skills in reproducing the climate and the marine biogeochemistry of the Mediterranean region. The authors report that the model, despite some observed biases (which they discuss in detail in their paper), encouragingly is able to capture key aspects of the regional Mediterranean climate and its marine biogeochemistry.

“The validation of atmosphere and ocean components has shown that the model is able to capture the variability of the atmospheric heat fluxes and spatial patterns of several variables in the region such as land surface temperature, precipitation, evaporation, and sea surface temperature with a general improvement in the biases compared to previous versions,” says the study’s lead author M.Reale. “At the same time, we observed some deficiencies as a warm and dry bias over the land in summer associated with the resolution of the atmospheric module and the tuning of the boundary layer and convective precipitation scheme.”

One particularly novel aspect of the new implementation of the model is the possibility of simulating the dynamics of the marine ecosystem through a Biogeochemical Flux Model (BFM), coupled online with MITgcm and, on the biogeochemical side, M.Reale says the RegCM‐ES shows good skill in reproducing mean values and spatial patterns of key biogeochemical variables such as net primary production, phosphate, and chlorophyll‐a. However, he acknowledges some limitations including deficiencies mainly in the simulation of mean values of nitrate and dissolved oxygen in the basin which the team has associated with too large vertical mixing throughout the water column, deficiencies in the boundary conditions, and solubility computations.

“Overall, RegCM‐ES has the potential to become a powerful tool for the analysis of the impacts of climate change on the ocean and marine biogeochemistry in the Mediterranean region as well as many other parts of the world.”

To find out more about this work contact Marco

Marco’s research was previously featured in the MITgcm blog in 2016 with Reversing the Ionian

About the Researcher

Marco Reale is a postdoc in OGS (Istituto nazionale di oceanografia e geofisica sperimentale) current projects include the analysis of the biogeochemical dynamics and the storm activity in the Mediterranean region under different emission scenarios. Marco began using MITgcm in 2013 as part of his PhD. When not busy modeling he says he enjoys swimming, playing waterpolo, reading books (his favorite American writer is Stephen King), watching American TV series, studying foreign languages, and dreaming about flying!

This Month’s Featured Publication

Other New Publications this Month

J.A. Baker et al (2021), Meridional Overturning Circulation in a multi-basin model. Part II: Sensitivity to diffusivity and wind in warm and cool climates, Journal of Physical Oceanography, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-20-0121.1

L. E. Baker, and A. Mashayek (2021), Surface Reflection of Bottom Generated Oceanic Lee Waves, arXiv:2103.03779 [physics.flu-dyn]

David T. Bett (2020) Modelling the freshwater balance and influence of icebergs in the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Southampton, UK.

D.A. Cherian, D.B. Whitt, R.M. Holmes, R.-C. Lien, S.D. Bachman, and W.G. Large (2021), Off-equatorial deep-cycle turbulence forced by Tropical Instability Waves in the equatorial Pacific, Journal of Physical Oceanography, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-20-0229.1

Boris Galperin, Semion Sukoriansky & Bo Qiu (2021), Seasonal oceanic variability on meso- and submesoscales: a turbulence perspective, Ocean Dynamics, doi: 10.1007/s10236-021-01444-1

Yankun Gong et a; (2021), Directional decomposition of internal tides propagating from multiple generation sites, Ocean Modelling, doi: 10.1016/j.ocemod.2021.101801

Liu, Y. and Losch, M.(2021), Numerical modeling on landfast ice in Arctic region, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021

Ryan Love, Heather Andres, Alan Condron, and Lev Tarasov (2021), Eddy permitting simulations of freshwater injection from major Northern Hemisphere outlets during the last deglacial, Climate of the Past (preprint), doi: 10.5194/cp-2021-15

Kexiao Lu, Jing Wang & Meng Zhang (2021), Study on prediction of internal solitary waves propagation in the southern Andaman Sea, Journal of Oceanography, doi: 10.1007/s10872-021-00594-6

Martyanov, S. D., Dvornikov, A. Y., Ryabchenko, V. A., and Sein, D. V. (2021), Study of the sea ice impact on primary production in the Barents and Kara Seas in past and future climates, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021

C. Mehlmann, S. Danilov, M. Losch, J.F. Lemieux, N. Hutter, T. Richter, P. Blain, E.C. Hunke, and P. Korn (2021), Simulating linear kinematic features in viscous-plastic sea ice models on quadrilateral and triangular grids, arXiv:2103.04431 [math.NA]

Christian Mohn, Martin White, Anneke Denda, Svetlana Erofeeva, Barbara Springer, Robert Turnewitsch, Bernd Christiansen (2021), Dynamics of currents and biological scattering layers around Senghor Seamount, a shallow seamount inside a tropical Northeast Atlantic eddy corridor, Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, doi: 10.1016/j.dsr.2021.103497

Shiqiu Peng et al (2021), Energetics Based Estimation of the Diapycnal Mixing Induced by Internal Tides in the Andaman Sea, JGR Oceans, doi: 10.1029/2020JC016521

Luke Phillipson, Yi Li, and Ralf Toumi (2021), Strongly Coupled Assimilation of a Hypothetical Ocean Current Observing Network within a Regional Ocean-Atmosphere Coupled Model: An OSSE Case Study of Typhoon Hato, Monthly Weather Review, doi: 10.1175/MWR-D-20-0108.1

Poinelli, Mattia; Schodlok, Michael; Larour, Eric, (2021), Modeling ocean dynamics in ice-shelf rifts, Earth and Space Science Open Archive ESSOAr; doi:10.1002/essoar.10506246.2

Richet, O., Sloyan, B., Pena-Molino, B., and Nikurashin, M.(2021), Impact of the barotropic tides on the seasonal Indonesian Throughflow , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021

Samra, D., Helling, C., Min, M., and Birnstiel, T.(2021), Modelling Mineral Snowflakes in the Atmospheres of Gas-Giant Exoplanets, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021

Tong, Jia et al (2021), Generation of shoreward nonlinear internal waves south of the Hainan Island: SAR observations and numerical simulations, ESSOAr (submitted to JGR – Oceans), doi: 10.1002/essoar.10506449.1

Peidong Wang et al (2021), On the effects of the ocean on atmospheric CFC-11 lifetimes and emissions, PNAS, doi: 10.1073/pnas.2021528118 |

Jamie Wilson et al (2021), Gemini/GMOS Optical Transmission Spectroscopy of WASP-121b: signs of variability in an ultra-hot Jupiter? arXiv: 2103.05698 [astro-ph.EP]

Peng Zhan et al (2021), Coastal circulation and water transport properties of the Red Sea Project lagoon, Ocean Modelling, doi: 10.1016/j.ocemod.2021.101791

Mengnan Zhao et al (2021), Using Drifter Velocity Measurements to Assess and Constrain Coarse-Resolution Ocean Models, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, doi: 10.1175/JTECH-D-20-0159.1

Fei Zheng et al (2021), Evaluation of Arctic Sea-ice Cover and Thickness Simulated by MITgcm, Advances in Atmospheric Sciences,

Do you have news about research using MITgcm? We are looking for contributions to these pages. If you have an interesting MITgcm project (ocean, atmosphere, sea-ice, physics, biology or otherwise) that you want to tell people about, get in touch. To make a post, contact Helen