Iterative Schwarz Method to Couple Ocean and Atmosphere in a Global Climate Model

Author(s):  
Olivier Marti ◽  
Sébastien Nguyen ◽  
Pascale Braconnot ◽  
Florian Lemarié ◽  
Eric Blayo

<p>For historical and practical reasons, present-day coupling algorithms implemented in ocean-atmosphere models are primarily driven by the necessity to conserve energy and water at the air-sea interface. However the asynchronous coupling algorithms currently used in ocean-atmosphere do not allow for a correct phasing between the ocean and the atmosphere.</p><p>In an asynchronous coupling algorithm, the total simulation time is split into smaller time intervals (a.k.a. coupling periods) over which averaged-in-time<br>boundary data are exchanged. For a particular coupling period, the average atmospheric fluxes are computed in the atmospheric model using the oceanic surface properties computed and averaged by the oceanic model over the previous coupling period. Therefore, for a given coupling period, the fluxes used by the oceanic model are not coherent with the oceanic surface properties considered by the atmospheric model. The mathematical consistency of the solution at the interface is not guaranteed.</p><p>The use of an iterative coupling algorithm, such as Schwarz methods, is a way to correct this inconsistency and to properly reproduce the diurnal cycle when the coupling period is less than one day. In Lemarié et al. (2014), preliminary numerical experiments using the Schwarz coupling method for the simulation of a tropical cyclone with a regional coupled model were carried out. In ensemble simulations, the Schwarz iterative coupling method leads to a significantly reduced spread in the ensemble results (in terms of cyclone trajectory and intensity), thus suggesting that a source of error is removed with respect to the asynchronous coupling case.</p><p>In the present work, the Schwarz iterative method is implemented in IPSLCM6, a state-of-the-art global ocean-atmosphere coupled model used to study past, present and future climates. We analyse the convergence speed and the quality of the convergence. A partial iterative method is also tested: in a first phase, only the atmosphere physics and the vertical diffusion terms are computed, until the convergence. This provide a first guess for the full model which is then iterated until convergence of the whole system. The impact on the diurnal cycle will also be presented.</p>

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 2959-2975
Author(s):  
Olivier Marti ◽  
Sébastien Nguyen ◽  
Pascale Braconnot ◽  
Sophie Valcke ◽  
Florian Lemarié ◽  
...  

Abstract. State-of-the-art Earth system models, like the ones used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), suffer from temporal inconsistencies at the ocean–atmosphere interface. Indeed, the coupling algorithms generally implemented in those models do not allow for a correct phasing between the ocean and the atmosphere and hence between their diurnal cycles. A possibility to remove these temporal inconsistencies is to use an iterative coupling algorithm based on the Schwarz iterative method. Despite its large computational cost compared to standard coupling methods, which makes the algorithm implementation impractical for production runs, the Schwarz method is useful to evaluate some of the errors made in state-of-the-art ocean–atmosphere coupled models (e.g., in the representation of the processes related to diurnal cycle), as illustrated by the present study. IPSL-CM6-SW-VLR is a low-resolution version of the IPSL-CM6 coupled model with a simplified land surface model, implementing a Schwarz iterative coupling scheme. Comparisons between coupled solutions obtained with this new scheme and the standard IPSL coupling scheme (referred to as the parallel algorithm) show large differences after sunrise and before sunset, when the external forcing (insolation at the top of the atmosphere) has the fastest pace of change. At these times of the day, the difference between the two numerical solutions is often larger than 100 % of the solution, even with a small coupling period, thus suggesting that significant errors are potentially made with current coupling methods. Most of those differences can be strongly reduced by making only two iterations of the Schwarz method, which leads to a doubling of the computing cost. Besides the parallel algorithm used in IPSL-CM6, we also test a so-called sequential atmosphere-first algorithm, which is used in some coupled ocean–atmosphere models. We show that the sequential algorithm improves the numerical results compared to the parallel one at the expanse of a loss of parallelism. The present study focuses on the ocean–atmosphere interface with no sea ice. The problem with three components (ocean–sea ice–atmosphere) remains to be investigated.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véra Oerder ◽  
Pierre-Amaël Auger ◽  
Joaquim Bento ◽  
Samuel Hormazabal

<p><span> Regional high resolution biogeochemical modeling studies generaly use an oceanic model forced by prescribed atmospheric conditions. The computational cost of such approach is far lower than using an high resolution ocean-atmosphere coupled model. However, forced oceanic models cannot represent adequately the atmospheric reponse to the oceanic mesoscale (~10-100km) structures and the impact on the oceanic dynamics.</span></p><p><span>To assess the bias introduce by the use of a forced model, we compare here a regional high resolution (1/12º) ocean-atmosphere coupled model with oceanic simulations forced by the outputs of the coupled simulation. Several classical forcing strategies are compared : bulk formulae, prescribed stress, prescribed heat fluxes with or without Sea Surface Temperature (SST) restoring term, .... We study the Chile Eastern Boundary Upwelling System, and the oceanic model includes a biogeochemical component,</span></p><p><span>The coupled model oceanic mesoscale impacts the atmosphere through surface current and SST anomalies. Surface currents mainly affect the wind stress while SST impacts both the wind stress and the heat fluxes. In the forced simulations, mesoscale structures generated by the model internal variability does not correspond to those of the coupled simulation. According to the forcing strategy, the atmospheric conditions are not modified by the forced model mesoscale, or the modifications are not realistic. The regional dynamics (coastal upwelling, mesoscale activity, …) is affected, with impact on the biogeochemical activity.</span></p><p> </p><p> </p><p><em>This work was supported by the FONDECYT project 3180472 (Chile), with computational support of the NLHPC from the Universidad de Chile, the HPC from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso and the Irene HPC from the GENCI at the CEA (France).</em></p>


2011 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flávia Noronha Dutra Ribeiro ◽  
Jacyra Soares ◽  
Amauri Pereira de Oliveira

A coupled atmospheric-oceanic model was used to investigate whether there is a positive feedback between the coastal upwelling and the sea breeze at Cabo Frio - RJ (Brazil). Two experiments were performed to ascertain the influence of the sea breeze on the coastal upwelling: the first one used the coupled model forced with synoptic NE winds of 8 m s-1 and the sign of the sea breeze circulation was set by the atmospheric model; the second experiment used only the oceanic model with constant 8 m s-1 NE winds. Then, to study the influence of the coastal upwelling on the sea breeze, two more experiments were performed: one using a coastal upwelling representative SST initial field and the other one using a constant and homogeneous SST field of 26°C. Finally, two more experiments were conducted to verify the influence of the topography and the spatial distribution of the sea surface temperature on the previous results. The results showed that the sea breeze can intensify the coastal upwelling, but the coastal upwelling does not intensify the sea breeze circulation, suggesting that there is no positive feedback between these two phenomena at Cabo Frio.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delfim Soares

In this work, coupled numerical analysis of interacting acoustic and dynamic models is focused. In this context, several numerical methods, such as the finite difference method, the finite element method, the boundary element method, meshless methods, and so forth, are considered to model each subdomain of the coupled model, and multidomain decomposition techniques are applied to deal with the coupling relations. Two basic coupling algorithms are discussed here, namely the explicit direct coupling approach and the implicit iterative coupling approach, which are formulated based on explicit/implicit time-marching techniques. Completely independent spatial and temporal discretizations among the interacting subdomains are permitted, allowing optimal discretization for each sub-domain of the model to be considered. At the end of the paper, numerical results are presented, illustrating the performance and potentialities of the discussed methodologies.


2007 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 575-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Bernie ◽  
E. Guilyardi ◽  
G. Madec ◽  
J. M. Slingo ◽  
S. J. Woolnough

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 1473-1485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yimin Ma ◽  
Xiaobing Zhou ◽  
Daohua Bi ◽  
Zhian Sun ◽  
Anthony C. Hirst

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey Kravtsov ◽  
Ilijana Mastilovic ◽  
Andrew McC. Hogg ◽  
William Dewar ◽  
Jeffrey Blundell

Abstract. This paper contains a description of recent changes to the formulation and numerical implementation of the Quasi-Geostrophic Coupled Model (Q-GCM), which constitute a major update of the previous version of the model (Hogg et al., 2014). The Q-GCM model has been designed to provide an efficient numerical tool to study the dynamics of multi-scale mid-latitude air–sea interactions and their climatic impacts. The present additions/alterations were motivated by an inquiry into the dynamics of mesoscale ocean–atmosphere coupling and, in particular, by an apparent lack of Q-GCM atmosphere’s sensitivity to mesoscale sea-surface temperature (SST) anomalies, even at high (mesoscale) atmospheric resolutions, contrary to ample theoretical and observational evidence otherwise. Major modifications aimed at alleviating this problem include an improved radiative-convective scheme resulting in a more realistic model mean state and associated model parameters, a new formulation of entrainment in the atmosphere, which prompts more efficient communication between the atmospheric mixed layer and free troposphere, as well as an addition of temperature-dependent wind component in the atmospheric mixed layer and the resulting mesoscale feedbacks. The most drastic change is, however, the inclusion of moist dynamics in the model, which may be key to midlatitude ocean–atmosphere coupling. Accordingly, this version of the model is to be referred to as the MQ-GCM model. Overall, the MQ-GCM model is shown to exhibit a rich spectrum of behaviours reminiscent of many of the observed properties of the Earth’s climate system. It remains to be seen whether the added processes are able to affect in fundamental ways the simulated dynamics of the mid-latitude ocean–atmosphere system’s coupled decadal variability.


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