Category: Climate modeling

Website Mailing List

Sea – Ice Interplay

In a novel approach, MITgcmers Ian Fenty and Patrick Heimbach use optimal state and parameter estimation to improve the sea-ice simulations.


Forecasting the Weather on Pluto

Angela Zalucha has always had a passion for weather but tantalized by the meteorology of other planetary bodies she uses MITgcm to explore the exotic atmospheres of our neighbours in the solar system and beyond, among them the recently re-defined “plutoid” Pluto.


Arctic Carbon Cycle Modeling

Arctic Biogeochemical Model - Change in Surface Net Community Production, year-on-year between 2006 and 2007 using MITgcm. Motivated by observations indicating rapidly falling annual sea-ice minima, Manfredi Manizza and co-workers have been using an Arctic configuration of MITgcm to explore the Arctic Ocean Carbon Cycle.


Climate Determinism Revisited

Stable states schematic In a first for models simulating the 3d dynamics of both ocean and atmosphere, the MITgcm climate model has been found to exhibit three different stable states for exactly the same set of parameters and external forcings, suggesting that climates may exhibit multiple equilibria even in the presence of a vigorous internal variability sustained by weather systems and ocean-atmosphere-sea ice interactions…


Modeling Nordic Seas

Modeling the Denmark Strait circulation using MITgcmThis month we look at work by Tom Haine, Professor of Physical Oceanography at Johns Hopkins University who is using MITgcm to model high-frequency fluctuations in the flow through the Denmark Strait…


MITjcm

Modeling internal convection on a gas giant using MITjcmThis month we look at work by Yohai Kaspi (a NOAA Climate and Global Change postdoctoral fellow currently working with Tapio Schneider at Caltech) who has been using MITgcm to model the atmosphere on a Jupiter-like gas giant…


Ocean Circulation and Atlantic Decadal Variability

Decadal Variability in an MITgcm Double Drake Experiment This month we look at work by Martha Buckley, David Ferreira, Jean-Michel Campin, Ross Tulloch and John Marshall, who have been using MITgcm to explore what role ocean circulation may play in Atlantic decadal variability. Asking the question: What is the role of the ocean circulation in Atlantic decadal SST variability, Buckley and co-workers use MITgcm to analyse the behavior of thermal anomalies within the framework of an idealised GCM.


Sea Ice

Figure 1. Arctic and Antarctic results from an eddy-permitting, MITgcm, global ocean and sea-ice simulation: Sea ice thickness distribution (color, in meters) averaged over the years 1992-2002. The ice-edge (estimated as the 15% isoline of ice concentration) retrieved from passive microwave satellite data is shown as a white contour for comparison. The top row shows the results for the Arctic Ocean and the bottom row for the Antarctic Oceans; the left column shows distributions for March and the right column for September.Work by Martin Losch of the Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany, Jean Michel Campin, Patrick Heimbach, Chris Hill (at MIT) and Dimitris Menemenlis (JPL) extending the reach of the MITgcm in to the Polar oceans, with the development of a dynamic-thermodynamic sea-ice model and its adjoint…


Aqua Planets

Figure 1. With the northern pole in view to the left, the southern pole to the right, sea surface temperature, and sea-ice height from the Double Drake experiment.Using a coupled ocean-atmosphere version of the MITgcm to study an Earth-like planet which is entirely covered by ocean, David Ferreira and John Marshall, are exploring the elemental role of the ocean in climate…