Transport Matrix Configurations

This page provides links to currently (publicly) available transport matrix configurations.

TM Configuration Ocean General Circulation Model Recommended tracer time step (dt) [s]1,2 Reference
MITgcm_ECCO MITgcm 43200.0 Stammer et al. (2004)
MITgcm_2.8deg MITgcm 43200.0 Dutkiewicz et al. (2005)
MITgcm_ECCO_v4 MITgcm 28800.0 Forget et al. (2015)
UVicKielIncrIsopycDiff University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (ver. 2.9) 28800.0 Kvale et al. (2017)
UVicKielIncrIsopycDiffTransient University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (ver. 2.9) 28800.0 Khatiwala et al. (2018)
UVicOSUpicdefault University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (ver. 2.9) 28800.0 Khatiwala et al. (2019)

Notes:

[1] This is the time step dt used to discretize the transport matrices and forcing term and for subsequent offline simulations with the TMM. While dt can be any multiple of the tracer time step deltaT used to run the ocean GCM from which the transport matrices were extracted, in practice you're limited by numerical stability and accuracy. (The value of deltaT for any TM configuration can be found in the corresponding grid.mat file.) The values of dt given above are those that have been found to be a good compromise between speed and stability/accuracy.

[2] For some biogeochemical problems, for example NPZD-type models with fast time scales in the upper ocean, this value of dt may lead to numerical instability or be too inaccurate. In such cases you can internally time-step your model, making sure that the sub-steps add up to dt.


Last updated: October 20, 2019