4. North Atlantic Regional Model

4.1. Overview

This regional model is constructed in the North Atlantic Ocean and encompasses the North Atlantic current and the ocean around the Greenland Ice Sheet. This model is constructed to run during the entirety of the time period covered by the publicly-available output from the ECCO Version 5 Alpha State Estimate i.e. 1992 through 2017. The domain of the regional model is shown in the following plot:

The domain of the regional model is shown in the following plot:

Bathymetry of the North Atlantic regional model

As we can see in this domain, this model is build on a curvilinear grid rather than a regular rectangular grid. As a result, vector quanties such as water velocity need to be interpolated onto the curvilinear grid rather than provided in zonal and meridional directions. Further, this region of the ocean has sea ice.

The construction of this model showcases additional components of the eccoseas package in the downscale and ecco modules pertaining to vector rotations and working with sea ice variables.

4.1.1. Required ECCO Data

For this example, the following list of files are required from the ECCO Version 5 Alpha State estimate. These files are available on the ECCO drive.

ECCO files required to construct the North Atlantic regional model

Variable

File(s)

Potential Temperature

THETA_1992.nc to THETA_2017.nc

Salinity

SALT_1992.nc to SALT_2017.nc

u-Component of Velocity

UVELMASS_2017.nc to UVELMASS_2017.nc

v-Component of Velocity

VVELMASS_2007.nc to VVELMASS_2017.nc

Sea Surface Height Anomaly

ETAN_1992.nc

Sea ice concentration

SIarea_1992.nc

Sea ice effective thickness

SIheff_1992.nc

Snow thickness on sea ice

SIhsnow_1992.nc

u-Component of sea ice velocity

SIuice_1992.nc

v-Component of sea ice velocity

SIvice_1992.nc

Lowngwave Downwelling Radiation

EIG_dlw_plus_ECCO_v4r1_ctrl (1992-2017)

Shortwave Downwelling Radiation

EIG_dsw_plus_ECCO_v4r1_ctrl (1992-2017)

u-Component of Wind

EIG_u10m (1992-2017)

v-Component of Wind

EIG_v10m (1992-2017)

Precipitation

EIG_rain_plus_ECCO_v4r1_ctrl (1992-2017)

Air Temperature

EIG_tmp2m_degC_plus_ECCO_v4r1_ctrl (1992-2017)

Specific Humidity

EIG_spfh2m_plus_ECCO_v4r1_ctrl (1992-2017)

Grid components for each tile

GRID.0001.nc through GRID.0013.nc

4.2. Initial Conditions

4.3. Boundary Conditions