1/12° Atlantic coast (NEATL12)

• Earth's sphericity: local gravity directed towards the centre of the Earth
• Relatively shallow water: ocean depth small in relation to the Earth's radius
• Hydrostatic: equilibrium between the vertical pressure gradiant and the floatability
• Boussinesq values: variations in density are not taken into account apart from their contribution to floatability
• Incompressibility: the three-dimensional divergence of the velocity field is considered to be nil
• 1.5 order closure turbulence scheme
• Non-linear equation of state couples the two active trace indices (temperature and salinity)
• No filtered free surface, time splitting
• Tide potential.

• Model state variables : temperature, salinity, zonal and meridian velocity, free surface elevation and vertical diffusivity coefficient
• Atmospheric forcing: zonal and meridional wind stress, penetrating heat flux, solar flux, non solar flux, salt flux, snow flux, precipitation and runoff minus evaporation budget
• Diagnostic variables: mixed layer depth (one density diagnostic, one vertical mixing diagnostic), sea level elevation, barotropic height, dynamic height, mass transport by density class through sections, meridional heat transport

• Diffusion: laplacian isopycnal operator (100 m2/s)
• Viscosity : bilaplacian horizontal operator (-1 E10 m2/s1)
• Schéma d'advection conservant l'énergie et l'enstrophie
• TKE (turbulent kinetic energy) vertical mixing model
• Partial slip lateral boundary friction condition
• Non linear bottom friction
• Partial step vertical coordinate

No

1/12° ORCA grid, i.e. between 5 and 8 Km. Number of points: 361 x 628

50 levels. From 1 m at the surface to 450 m at the bottom


NEATL12 vertical resolution (see black diamonds)

Bulk formaulation (CLIO). The monthly climatological flow of the main rivers is taken into account in the evaporation minus precipitation budget (Dai and Trenberth, 2002). A parameterization of the penetrating heat flux is used.

ECMWF (2000-2005) daily operational analysis.Zonal and meridional wind stress components, wind module, relative humidity, cloud coverage, rain, air temperature.

Monthly Levitus temperature and salinity from Levitus 98.

Combination between: ETOPO2, for open ocean, and GEBCO (IOC, 2003) for continental shelves

• 8 Gigabytes of memory
• 800 CPU hours
• 100 Gigabytes of output (daily output)