Connecting the Dots with MITgcm

This month we look at new work exploring whether high resolution MITgcm tracer simulations can help “connect the dots” in the sparse sampling problem associated with observing the evolution of released dye in a shallow sea.

In new work published in Nature Communications in July, an international team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Institute of Marine Sciences of Barcelona, Spain in collaboration with the National Centre for Scientific Research, France have been using MITgcm to study the balance between phytoplankton diversity and productivity.

This month we focus on Alan Condron, a Research Assistant Professor in the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who uses MITgcm to investigate past and future climate sensitivity to changes in Arctic meltwater.

This month we focus on several recent papers that have used MITgcm and its adjoint to perform state estimates and explore its ocean forecasting capabilities in the Gulf of Mexico.

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

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.

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.

This month we focus on research using MITgcm to model atmospheres on Jupiter-like exoplanets showcasing work by recent University of Arizona, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory graduate, Nikole Lewis.

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.