Grid degradation of submesoscale resolving ocean models: Benefits for offline passive tracer transport
TRACER
Eddy
Numerical diffusion
DOI:
10.1016/j.ocemod.2012.02.004
Publication Date:
2012-03-12T12:16:31Z
AUTHORS (6)
ABSTRACT
A numerical solution for an idealized double-gyre is used to investigate the sensitivity of ocean dynamics and passive tracer advection to horizontal resolution (Dx) in a mesoscale eddy rich regime. In agreement with previous studies, we find that ocean dynamical solutions are strongly sensitive to grid resolution. With mesoscale resolution ðDxOð10Þ kmÞ, eddies are marginally resolved and their impact on tracer transport is not well represented. At submesoscale resolution ðDxOð1Þ kmÞ, the number of mesoscale eddies and their energy is increased, due to the resolved submesoscales. The changes are mostly seen in the vorticity and vertical velocity fields, and are less obvious in the temperature field. In contrast, we demonstrate that the offline transport of passive tracer is not altered when the finest scales ðOð1Þ kmÞ present in the dynamical solutions are discarded. We do so by showing that dynamical solutions obtained with DxOð1Þ km can be degraded (following a flux preserving procedure) down to resolutions DXOð10Þ km without significantly impacting passive tracer solutions. The reason for this stems from the level of dissipation/diffusion required during the integration of the dynamical model which smoothes variance at wavelength smaller than at least 5-10 Dx. This result is used to derive a method which alle- viates data storage needs and accelerates tracer advection simulations, with a gain of the order of 10 3 in
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