Evaluation of the CMCC global eddying ocean model for the Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (OMIP2)

• Published in: Geoscientific Model Development
• Main Authors: D. Iovino, P. G. Fogli, S. Masina
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2023
• Subjects: Geology; QE1-996.5; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-6127-2023; https://doaj.org/article/e43914b0346f472e833ce44bc6fc1a3a

This paper describes the global eddying ocean–sea ice simulation produced at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) obtained following the experimental design of the Ocean Model Intercomparison Project phase 2 (OMIP2). The eddy-rich model (GLOB16) is based on the NEMOv3.6 framework, with a global horizontal resolution of 1 / 16 <svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="27pt" height="14pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="3eab029591d1ac4385b9279b611a0b8a"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="gmd-16-6127-2023-ie00001.svg" width="27pt" height="14pt" src="gmd-16-6127-2023-ie00001.png"/></svg:svg> ∘ and 98 vertical levels and was originally designed for an operational short-term ocean forecasting system. Here, it is driven by one multi-decadal cycle of the prescribed JRA55-do atmospheric reanalysis and runoff dataset in order to perform a long-term benchmarking experiment. To assess the accuracy of simulated 3D ocean fields and highlight the relative benefits of resolving mesoscale processes, the GLOB16 performances are evaluated via a selection of key climate metrics against observational datasets and two other NEMO configurations at lower resolutions: an eddy-permitting resolution (ORCA025) and a non-eddying resolution (ORCA1) designed to form the ocean–sea ice component of the fully coupled CMCC climate model. The well-known biases in the low-resolution simulations are significantly improved in the high-resolution model. The evolution and spatial pattern of large-scale features (such as sea surface temperature biases and winter mixed-layer structure) in GLOB16 are generally better reproduced, and the large-scale circulation is remarkably improved compared to the low-resolution oceans. We find that eddying resolution is an advantage in resolving the structure of western boundary currents, the overturning cells, and flow through key passages. GLOB16 might be an appropriate tool for ocean climate modeling efforts, even though ...