Adapting to life: ocean biogeochemical modelling and adaptive remeshing
Adapting to life: ocean biogeochemical modelling and adaptive remeshing
An outstanding problem in biogeochemical modelling of the ocean is that many of the key processes occur intermittently at small scales, such as the sub-mesoscale, that are not well represented in global ocean models. This is partly due to their failure to resolve sub-mesoscale phenomena, which play a significant role in vertical nutrient supply. Simply increasing the resolution of the models may be an inefficient computational solution to this problem. An approach based on recent advances in adaptive mesh computational techniques may offer an alternative. Here the first steps in such an approach are described, using the example of a simple vertical column (quasi-1-D) ocean biogeochemical model.
We present a novel method of simulating ocean biogeochemical behaviour on a vertically adaptive computational mesh, where the mesh changes in response to the biogeochemical and physical state of the system throughout the simulation. We show that the model reproduces the general physical and biological behaviour at three ocean stations (India, Papa and Bermuda) as compared to a high-resolution fixed mesh simulation and to observations. The use of an adaptive mesh does not increase the computational error, but reduces the number of mesh elements by a factor of 2–3. Unlike previous work the adaptivity metric used is flexible and we show that capturing the physical behaviour of the model is paramount to achieving a reasonable solution. Adding biological quantities to the adaptivity metric further refines the solution. We then show the potential of this method in two case studies where we change the adaptivity metric used to determine the varying mesh sizes in order to capture the dynamics of chlorophyll at Bermuda and sinking detritus at Papa. We therefore demonstrate that adaptive meshes may provide a suitable numerical technique for simulating seasonal or transient biogeochemical behaviour at high vertical resolution whilst minimising the number of elements in the mesh. More work is required to move this to fully 3-D simulations.
323-343
Hill, J.
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Popova, E.E.
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Ham, D.A.
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Piggott, M.D.
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Srokosz, M.
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9 May 2014
Hill, J.
fa0510a6-d43e-42eb-a3d0-e63173004fd8
Popova, E.E.
3ea572bd-f37d-4777-894b-b0d86f735820
Ham, D.A.
eaffb252-3570-4fb4-a419-7f1405e2dfd8
Piggott, M.D.
9f9fbf82-8bbb-4461-99bd-0053f5a22fff
Srokosz, M.
1e0442ce-679f-43f2-8fe4-9a0f0174d483
Hill, J., Popova, E.E., Ham, D.A., Piggott, M.D. and Srokosz, M.
(2014)
Adapting to life: ocean biogeochemical modelling and adaptive remeshing.
Ocean Science, 10 (3), .
(doi:10.5194/os-10-323-2014).
Abstract
An outstanding problem in biogeochemical modelling of the ocean is that many of the key processes occur intermittently at small scales, such as the sub-mesoscale, that are not well represented in global ocean models. This is partly due to their failure to resolve sub-mesoscale phenomena, which play a significant role in vertical nutrient supply. Simply increasing the resolution of the models may be an inefficient computational solution to this problem. An approach based on recent advances in adaptive mesh computational techniques may offer an alternative. Here the first steps in such an approach are described, using the example of a simple vertical column (quasi-1-D) ocean biogeochemical model.
We present a novel method of simulating ocean biogeochemical behaviour on a vertically adaptive computational mesh, where the mesh changes in response to the biogeochemical and physical state of the system throughout the simulation. We show that the model reproduces the general physical and biological behaviour at three ocean stations (India, Papa and Bermuda) as compared to a high-resolution fixed mesh simulation and to observations. The use of an adaptive mesh does not increase the computational error, but reduces the number of mesh elements by a factor of 2–3. Unlike previous work the adaptivity metric used is flexible and we show that capturing the physical behaviour of the model is paramount to achieving a reasonable solution. Adding biological quantities to the adaptivity metric further refines the solution. We then show the potential of this method in two case studies where we change the adaptivity metric used to determine the varying mesh sizes in order to capture the dynamics of chlorophyll at Bermuda and sinking detritus at Papa. We therefore demonstrate that adaptive meshes may provide a suitable numerical technique for simulating seasonal or transient biogeochemical behaviour at high vertical resolution whilst minimising the number of elements in the mesh. More work is required to move this to fully 3-D simulations.
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Published date: 9 May 2014
Organisations:
Marine Systems Modelling, Marine Physics and Ocean Climate
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Local EPrints ID: 367641
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/367641
ISSN: 1812-0792
PURE UUID: 577be1a1-dce8-4e7b-9e98-e927bb9d529f
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Date deposited: 04 Aug 2014 10:55
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 17:34
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Author:
J. Hill
Author:
E.E. Popova
Author:
D.A. Ham
Author:
M.D. Piggott
Author:
M. Srokosz
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