Category: Ocean modeling

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Overflowing with Movies

Nuno Serra from the University of Hamburg has used MITgcm in many ocean modeling projects, both from a process-modelling perspective and “realistically”, incorporating forcing from NCEP and ECMWF. He is especially interested in the processes regulating North Atlantic and North Pacific inter-annual to inter-decadal variability. A particular passion is overflows.


MITgcm on Ice

In a recent paper in the Journal of Physical Oceanography, An Nguyen (MIT) and co-authors Ronald Kwok (JPL) and Dimitris Menemenlis (JPL) report on work using MITgcm to better understand the origin and character of  the western arctic, upper halocline.


Ocean Biology Meets Physics

In this video, Mick Follows describes his group’s work using MITgcm and ECCO2 products to better understand the global carbon cycle and plankton populations.



Under the Ice

In a new paper published in the Annals of Glaciology, long-time MITgcm users Patrick Heimbach and Martic Losch investigate the sensitivity of sub-ice-shelf melt rates under the Pine Island Ice Shelf, West Antarctica, to changes in the oceanic state.


Modeling the Gulf of Aqaba (Gulf of Eilat)

Long-time MITgcm-ers Eli Biton and Hezi Gildor have been using the model to explore the circulation in the Gulf of Aqaba (Gulf of Eilat), a terminal elongated basin that exchanges water with the northern Red Sea


Wind Stress and Southern Ocean Meridional Overturning

ACC channel model - Image: R. AbernatheyRyan Abernathey and co-workers have been using idealised MITgcm simulations to explore the dependence of Southern Ocean meridional overturning on wind stress.


A Slippery Problem

Wall-vortex interactions - Image: Deremble et al. (2011)Deremble and co-authors have been using MITgcm to revisit the problem of no-slip boundary conditions in ocean models.


Modeling Nordic Seas II

Mean sea surface temperature and bottom topography - source: Vaage et al. (2011)Mike Spall, a Senior Scientist in the Physical Oceanography Group at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has been using MITgcm to understand newly observed characteristics of the Denmark Strait Overflow.


Baroclinic Instability in the Ocean

Global maps of inverse Eady time scale (days−1) (upper panel) and the ratio Lbci/Ldef (lower panel) - source Tulloch et al., 2011.In a new JPO paper, Ross Tulloch, John Marshall, Chris Hill and Shafer Smith report on an observational, modeling and theoretical study of the scales, growth rates and spectral fluxes of baroclinic instability in the ocean, permitting a discussion of the relation between the instability scale, the first baroclinic deformation scale (R1) and the equilibrated eddy scale.