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Simulating the Global Ocean's Submesoscale and Its Kinetics with Kilometer-Resolution Configurations of High-Resolution Earth System Model on Sunway Supercomputer
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  • Xuantong Wang,
  • Shiming Xu,
  • Shaoqing Zhang,
  • Zhihao Fan,
  • Chenhui Ning,
  • Yan Zhang,
  • Haohuan Fu,
  • Zhao Liu,
  • Lixin Wu
Xuantong Wang
Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University
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Shiming Xu
Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Shaoqing Zhang
Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Ocean University of China
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Zhihao Fan
Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University
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Chenhui Ning
Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University
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Yan Zhang
Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics
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Haohuan Fu
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, and Department for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
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Zhao Liu
National Supercomputing Center at Wuxi
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Lixin Wu
Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography/Institute for Advanced Ocean Studies, Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology
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Abstract

Simulating the ocean’s submesoscale is key to understand the mass and energy cycles of the ocean and the global climate system. Contrast to the ocean’s mesoscale, submesoscale processes are usually highly ageostrophic and manifest at the scales within 10km. Ocean general circulation models with kilometer-resolution are capable to resolve key submesoscale processes, hence indispensable for both process and climate studies. We construct a grid hierarchy for the ocean-sea ice model in the High-Resolution Earth System Model on Sunway supercomputer (SW-HRESM), which is based on Community Earth System Model (CESM2) with deep optimizations on the Chinese home-brew supercomputing architecture of Sunway. The highest grid resolution is 0.03o (2.4km globally). In this study we evaluate the ocean-sea ice coupled simulations by SW-HRESM, focusing on the submesoscale and the kinetic energy (KE) cycles. In particular, highly ageostrophic submesoscale turbulence is simulated, dominated by deepened mixed layers (ML) during winter and the ensuing instabilities. KE and its transition between scales are further evaluated for major western boundary current systems. During winter, submesoscale is shown to dominate inverse cascading which energizes large-scale flows, as well as forward cascading to dissipation scales. The mesoscale-submesoscale continuum and the associated inverse KE cascading is further complemented by the forward KE cascading from the large-scale due to flow instabilities. In order to fully resolve the submesoscale spectrum, including frontal processes and wind-wave interactions, models finer than 1km are needed. Besides the model resolution, improvements for both the ocean and the fully coupled model of SW-HRESM are also discussed.
10 Jul 2024Submitted to ESS Open Archive
11 Jul 2024Published in ESS Open Archive