Aqua planet

[curtis@lpl_arizona_edu]

Hi again,

Is there documentation about what the aqua planet mode actually does? I couldn't find that much about it in either the CAM User's Guide or the Description of CAM documents. In particular, we'd like to know how the surface boundary condition is handled and how the atmosphere and surface interact in this parameterization.

Thanks,
Curtis

 

[olson]

Aqua-planet mode is simply the stand-alone CAM/Data Ocean Model with
the land turned off and incoming solar set perpetually to equinox conditions
(March 21 - there is a diurnal cycle). Therefore, atmosphere and surface interact in
this parameterization via the data ocean model. The default "aqua-planet" SST's are
specified analytically via a function that is zonally averaged and hemispherically
symmetric with a 27C max at the equator and tailing off to 0C at 60 deg N/S.
Other slight variants of this SST function can also be turned on in the code:

atm/cam/src/ocnsice/dom/sst_data.F90

None of the SST's go below 0C. Therefore, the ice model will not be invoked.

Since there is no land, PHIS and SGH are also set to 0. LANDMCOS should also
be 0., but may not be in all released versions of the code. LANDMCOS is a field
used by physics to account for effects over the oceans of "nearby" land. Since
LANDMCOS is read directly from the atmospheric IC file (and not the Land IC file),
it will exert a ghost land effect on the simulation unless it is explicitly zeroed out.

Aqua-planet is not set up for use with the slab ocean model.

 

[gabdab@gmail_com]

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