Forcing

This page documents the user-facing configuration and behavior for current forcing in Omega:

  • Surface stress forcing (e.g. wind stress)

  • Coupled tracer flux forcing (mass, energy and salt)

  • Surface tracer restoring

Surface stress forcing

Surface stress forcing adds momentum tendency from surface stress (e.g. wind).

Surface stress forcing configuration

Surface stress forcing behavior is controlled by two configuration blocks:

Omega:
  SfcStress:
    InterpType: Isotropic

  Tendencies:
    SfcStressForcingTendencyEnable: true

  • SfcStress.InterpType

    • Isotropic: isotropic cell-to-edge interpolation for surface stress

    • Anisotropic: anisotropic interpolation option

  • Tendencies.SfcStressForcingTendencyEnable: switch to enable surface stress forcing tendency

See Interpolate cells to edges for a detailed description of the cell-to-edge interpolation operators (Isotropic and Anisotropic) used by SfcStress.InterpType.

Required input fields

Surface stress forcing uses surface stress input fields:

  • SfcStressZonal

  • SfcStressMeridional

These are stored in forcing variables and used to form edge-normal stress (NormalStressEdge) that enters momentum tendencies.

Surface thickness and tracer flux forcing

Surface thickness and tracer flux forcing applies ocean-atmosphere and ocean-sea ice fluxes from the other model components (atmosphere, sea ice) to the thickness and tracer equations. This enables the ocean to respond to heat, freshwater, and salt exchanges at the surface. These fluxes can be from data or (active) coupled components.

Surface thickness and tracer flux forcing configuration

Surface thickness and tracer flux forcing is controlled by two configuration flags:

Omega:
  Tendencies:
    SfcThicknessForcingTendencyEnable: false
    SfcTracerForcingTendencyEnable: false

  • Tendencies.SfcThicknessForcingTendencyEnable: enables coupled freshwater and salt flux forcing on thickness

  • Tendencies.SfcTracerForcingTendencyEnable: enables coupled heat and salt flux forcing on tracers

Required input fields

Coupled tracer flux forcing uses 13 auxiliary fields organized by type:

Freshwater mass fluxes (kg m⁻² s⁻¹):

  • SnowFlux: precipitation from snow

  • RainFlux: precipitation from rain

  • EvaporationFlux: evaporative water loss

  • SeaIceFreshWaterFlux: freshwater mass flux from sea-ice melt or formation

  • IceRunoffFlux: runoff from land ice

  • RiverRunoffFlux: runoff from rivers

Heat/Enthalpy fluxes (W m⁻²):

  • LatentHeatFluxEvap: latent heat flux from evaporation phase change

  • SensibleHeatFlux: sensible heat flux

  • LongWaveHeatFluxUp: upward longwave radiation

  • LongWaveHeatFluxDown: downward longwave radiation

  • SeaIceHeatFlux: heat/energy from sea-ice interaction (incl. enthalpy of meltwater)

  • ShortWaveHeatFlux: shortwave (solar) radiation

Salt mass flux (kg m⁻² s⁻¹):

  • SeaIceSaltFlux: salt flux from sea-ice formation/melt processes

These fields are populated by external coupling components (typically atmosphere and ice models). Omega assumes the incoming values match the documented units. For now, there are assumed to come from a forcing.nc file, but later will be provided by the equivalent ocn_comp_mct.F.

Notes

  • Coupled fluxes are applied only at the surface layer (top active layer) for each cell. In the future, vertical spreading of contributions from river runoff will be needed.

  • Pseudo-thickness tendency is computed from the (six) freshwater mass fluxes and the salt mass flux SeaIceSaltFlux, converted to a pseudo-thickness change.

  • Temperature tendency is computed from direct heat flux plus mass-flux enthalpy terms, converted to conservative-temperature tendency via \(H_{\text{FluxFac}} = 1.0 / (\rho_{sw} c^0_{p,sw})\) where \(c^0_{p,sw}\) is the reference specific heat of seawater defined by TEOS-10. The enthalpy associated with mass fluxes is currently hard-coded to SST for liquid fluxes and the freezing temperature for solid fluxes (which are melted using a constant latent heat of fusion). Note that the enthalpy of liquid meltwater from sea ice is already included in SeaIceHeatFlux.

  • Salinity tendency from SeaIceSaltFlux is scaled by \(S_{\text{FluxFac}} = 1.0e3 / \rho_{sw}\) to account for unit conversion from kg/(m²·s) to salinity units (g/kg).

  • Fluxes are assumed to be in the documented units (i.e. net mass fluxes); any unit conversion should be performed by the coupling component before providing flux values to Omega.

  • The reference density used here (\(\rho_{sw}\)) is not a Boussinesq density, it is the conversion factor from mass to pseudo-thickness.

  • No iceberg fluxes are included for now.

Surface tracer restoring

Surface tracer restoring applies a piston-velocity tendency, or damping, at the ocean surface for selected tracers. This is implemented to mitigate drifts in chosen tracers (most often salinity) by nudging the model’s simulated tracer values towards observed climatological values. This process prevents oceanic regimes from shifting away from reality due to errors in surface freshwater forcing (in the case of salinity restoring). Currently, it is applied everywhere when enabled.

Surface tracer restoring configuration

Surface tracer restoring is controlled by two configuration blocks:

Omega:
  SurfaceRestoring:
    TracersToRestore: [Temperature, Salinity]
    PistonVelocity: 1.585e-5

  Tendencies:
    SurfaceTracerRestoringEnable: true

  • TracersToRestore: list of tracer names that restoring is applied to

  • PistonVelocity: restoring rate coefficient

  • SurfaceTracerRestoringEnable: switch to enable surface tracer restoring

When restoring is enabled, Omega resolves TracersToRestore into an internal list of tracer IDs and applies restoring only to tracers in that list.

Restoring target fields

Surface restoring uses auxiliary fields:

  • TracersMonthlySurfClimoCell: restoring target climatological values

  • SurfTracerRestoringDiffsCell: computed target-minus-state differences

The restoring tendency is computed at the surface layer only and is limited by the configured PistonVelocity and target-minus-state difference.

Notes

  • If a tracer is not listed in TracersToRestore, no restoring tendency is applied to that tracer.

  • If surface restoring is enabled but no tracer IDs are available at tendency compute-time, Omega aborts with an error.