Simple algorithms to compute meridional overturning and barotropic streamfunctions on unstructured meshes

Computation of barotropic and meridional overturning streamfunctions for models formulated on unstructured meshes is commonly preceded by interpolation to a regular mesh. This operation destroys the original conservation, which can be then artificially imposed to make the computation possible. An el...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geoscientific Model Development
Main Authors: Sidorenko, Dmitry, Danilov, Sergey, Koldunov, Nikolay, Scholz, Patrick, Wang, Qiang
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-3337-2020
https://noa.gwlb.de/receive/cop_mods_00052237
https://noa.gwlb.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/cop_derivate_00051890/gmd-13-3337-2020.pdf
https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/13/3337/2020/gmd-13-3337-2020.pdf
Description
Summary:Computation of barotropic and meridional overturning streamfunctions for models formulated on unstructured meshes is commonly preceded by interpolation to a regular mesh. This operation destroys the original conservation, which can be then artificially imposed to make the computation possible. An elementary method is proposed that avoids interpolation and preserves conservation in a strict model sense. The method is described as applied to the discretization of the Finite volumE Sea ice – Ocean Model (FESOM2) on triangular meshes. It, however, is generalizable to colocated vertex-based discretization on triangular meshes and to both triangular and hexagonal C-grid discretizations.