Resolving and Parameterising the Ocean Mesoscale in Earth System Models
| Type | Article | ||||||||||||
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| Date | 2020-12 | ||||||||||||
| Language | English | ||||||||||||
| Author(s) | Hewitt Helene T.1, Roberts Malcolm1, Mathiot Pierre1, Biastoch Arne2, Blockley Ed1, Chassignet Eric P.3, Fox-Kemper Baylor4, Hyder Pat1, Marshall David P.5, Popova Ekaterina6, Treguier Anne-Marie7, Zanna Laure8, Yool Andrew6, Yu Yongqiang9, 10, Beadling Rebecca11, Bell Mike1, Kuhlbrodt Till12, Arsouze Thomas13, Bellucci Alessio14, Castruccio Fred15, 16, Gan Bolan16, 17, Putrasahan Dian18, Roberts Christopher D.19, Van Roekel Luke20, Zhang Qiuying16 | ||||||||||||
| Affiliation(s) | 1 : Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, UK 2 : GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany 3 : Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA 4 : Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA 5 : Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 6 : National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK 7 : CNRS, IRD, Ifremer, Laboratoire d’Océanographie Physique et Spatiale (LOPS), IUEM, Univ. Brest, Brest, France 8 : Courant Institute, New York University, New York, NY, USA 9 : LASG, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 10029, China 10 : University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100039, China 11 : Department of Geosciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA 12 : National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK 13 : Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC), Barcelona, Spain 14 : Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Bologna, Italy 15 : National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO, USA 16 : International Laboratory for High Resolution Earth System Prediction (iHESP), College Station, TX, USA 17 : Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science (QNLM), Qingdao, China 18 : Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany 19 : European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Reading, UK 20 : T-3 Solid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA 21 : Texas A&M University (TAMU), College Station, TX, USA |
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| Source | Current Climate Change Reports (2198-6061) (Springer Science and Business Media LLC), 2020-12 , Vol. 6 , N. 4 , P. 137-152 | ||||||||||||
| DOI | 10.1007/s40641-020-00164-w | ||||||||||||
| WOS© Times Cited | 37 | ||||||||||||
| Note | Part of a collection: Topical Collection on Advances and Future Directions in Earth System Modelling | ||||||||||||
| Keyword(s) | Ocean models, Resolution, Parameterisation, Mesoscale, Submesoscale | ||||||||||||
| Abstract | Purpose of Review Assessment of the impact of ocean resolution in Earth System models on the mean state, variability, and future projections and discussion of prospects for improved parameterisations to represent the ocean mesoscale. Recent Findings The majority of centres participating in CMIP6 employ ocean components with resolutions of about 1 degree in their full Earth System models (eddy-parameterising models). In contrast, there are also models submitted to CMIP6 (both DECK and HighResMIP) that employ ocean components of approximately 1/4 degree and 1/10 degree (eddy-present and eddy-rich models). Evidence to date suggests that whether the ocean mesoscale is explicitly represented or parameterised affects not only the mean state of the ocean but also the climate variability and the future climate response, particularly in terms of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and the Southern Ocean. Recent developments in scale-aware parameterisations of the mesoscale are being developed and will be included in future Earth System models. Summary Although the choice of ocean resolution in Earth System models will always be limited by computational considerations, for the foreseeable future, this choice is likely to affect projections of climate variability and change as well as other aspects of the Earth System. Future Earth System models will be able to choose increased ocean resolution and/or improved parameterisation of processes to capture physical processes with greater fidelity. |
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