Towards a better representation of dense gravity currents in the ocean model SLIM

Mattias Van Eetvelt will give a seminar entitled "Towards a better representation of dense gravity currents in the ocean model SLIM".

This seminar is organised by the ELI-E (Environmental Sciences) division of the Earth and Life Institute. 

Abstract

The ocean plays a key role in regulating Earth’s climate by transporting heat around the globe. The Gulf Stream is one example of such heat transport, driven, like many major currents, by differences in water density. Accurately modeling these processes requires ocean models to preserve water-mass properties over long timescales. However, this is challenging because numerical mixing tends to mix water masses of different densities, degrading the representation of dense gravity currents and overflows.

Here we assess the amount of numerical mixing in the three-dimensional ocean model SLIM3D using three test cases of increasing complexity. We compare SLIM3D’s performance with several well-established ocean models.