Abstract
Abstract. This study presents the principles of the new coupling interface based on the SURFEX multi-surface model and the OASIS3-MCT coupler. As SURFEX can be plugged into several atmospheric models, it can be used in a wide range of applications, from global and regional coupled climate systems to high-resolution numerical weather prediction systems or very fine-scale models dedicated to process studies. The objective of this development is to build and share a common structure for the atmosphere–surface coupling of all these applications, involving on the one hand atmospheric models and on the other hand ocean, ice, hydrology, and wave models. The numerical and physical principles of SURFEX interface between the different component models are described, and the different coupled systems in which the SURFEX OASIS3-MCT-based coupling interface is already implemented are presented.
Highlights
In the late 80s, the first coupled systems assembling atmosphere and ocean models were developed for climate-scale studies
Integrated in many atmospheric models, this platform can be used for various kinds of applications – from academic simulations to numerical weather forecast and climate projections – and over a wide range of spatial scales and resolutions, from local sites to global climate model scales
A quite generic interface with OASIS3-MCT was implemented in SURFEX to allow the coupling of this surface model to physically elaborated hydrological, ocean/seaice and wave models
Summary
In the late 80s, the first coupled systems assembling atmosphere and ocean models were developed for climate-scale studies. As fully embedded hard-coded coupling restricts the modularity of the coupled system and the reuse of its components, many coupled systems are built using instead higherlevel coupling technologies developed for that purpose These coupling technologies can be roughly divided into two categories, both including the ability to exchange data between components, interpolate data on different grids and manage the time evolution of the model integration. This paper presents the development of a standard coupling interface in the SURFEX surface modelling platform (Masson et al, 2013) based on OASIS3-MCT to couple atmospheric models with a variety of hydrological, ocean, wave and sea-ice models. The introduction of a standard OASIS3-MCT coupling interface in SURFEX allows more sophisticated 2-D or 3-D modelling for representing the evolution of the four surface types considered, as well as using different grids for the ocean, ice, wave or hydrological models.
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