MPAS-Ocean

The following are considerations that may be useful in developing a task for MPAS-Ocean

Initial conditions

The minimal set of initial state variables that must be defined in the init step of each task is:

  • temperature

  • salinity

  • normalVelocity

  • fCell

  • fEdge

  • fVertex

Boundary conditions

The following horizontal boundary conditions are supported for planar domains

  • periodic

  • free slip (solid boundary, normalVelocity = 0 at edges of the domain, tangential force is 0)

These horizontal boundary conditions are enforced at the stage at which the planar mesh is constructed, by specifying nonperiodic as true or false.

The following vertical boundary conditions are supported:

  • free slip (tangential force is 0, drag is disabled). Generally only used for the free surface.

  • free surface with specified flux (of mass, momentum, and/or scalars). Generally only possible at the top boundary.

  • rigid surface with no slip (velocity normal to the surface is zero, tangential force is non-zero because bottom or top drag is applied). While the boundary is no-slip, normalVelocity is solved at the mid-point of the layer and is generally non-zero.

Forcing

Constant or time-varying forcing is possible for some properties. The forcing fields (generally 2-d and applied at the surface) are generally read in from a forcing stream. For more details, start by consulting the Registry under the headings forcing and tidal_forcing.