Advancing Dynamical Cores of Oceanic Models across All Scales

Abstract

Oceanic numerical models are used to understand and predict a wide range of processes from global paleoclimate scales to short-term prediction in estuaries and shallow coastal areas. One of the overarching challenges, and the main topic of the COMMODORE workshop, is the appropriate design of the dynamical cores given the wide variety of scales of interest and their interactions with atmosphere, sea-ice, biogeochemistry, and even societal processes. The construction of a dynamical core is a very long effort which takes years and decades of research and development and which requires a collaborative mixture of scientific disciplines. This work involves a significant number of fundamental choices, such as which equations to solve, which horizontal and vertical grid arrangement is adequate, which discrete algorithms allows jointly computational efficiency and sufficient accuracy, etc. Nowadays, a broad range of numerical methods are implemented in models used for realistic ocean simulations, and, owed to the advances in computational power, a meeting point has been reached between global circulation models and regional local models such that there can be mutual benefits of a cross-fertilization between communities. This report outlines an initiative to bring together the world-wide leading researchers actively contributing to the development of oceanic model dynamical cores, such that participants could network together and focus on next challenges irrespective of target applications (regional, coastal, or global). The first community for the numerical modeling of the global, regional and coastal ocean (COMMODORE) workshop (https://commodore2018.sciencesconf.org/) has been organized in Paris in September 2018. In total, the participants represented 15 oceanic dynamical cores among the most widely used by the research and operational community. The motivations, topics of discussion sessions, and outcomes of the workshop are summarized below.