The MIT General Circulation Model

MITgcm is a hydrodynamical kernel used for the study of the circulation of atmosphere and ocean. It has evolved continuously since its inception. Development efforts are driven by new applications and the desire to improve model solutions. Model development often involves more analysis than code-writing.

MITgcm's non-hydrostatic formulation enables it to simulate fluid phenomena over a wide range of scales

As a result of its non-hydrostatic formulation MITgcm is able to simulate fluid phenomena over a wide range of scales, from a tens of meters to planetary scales; its adjoint capability enables it to be applied to parameter and state estimation problems. By employing fluid isomorphisms, one hydrodynamical kernel can be used to seamlessly simulate flow in both the atmosphere and ocean.

Some of the model developments pioneered by the MITgcm team include:

Click on an icon to read more about the most recent of these developments here:

Publications:

In press:

Campin, J-M, C. Hill, H. Jones and J. Marshall: Superparameterization in ocean modeling: application to deep convection. Submitted to Ocean Modeling

Martin Losch, Dimitris Menemenlis, Jean-Michel Campin, Patrick Heimbach, and Chris Hill. On the formulation of sea-ice models. Part 1: Effects of different solver implementations and parameterizations. Ocean Modelling, 33, 129-144, doi:10.1016/j.ocemod.2009.12.008, 2010.

Patrick Heimbach, Dimitris Menemenlis, Martin Losch, Jean-Michel Campin, and Chris Hill. On the formulation of sea-ice models. Part 2: Lessons from multi-year adjoint sea ice export sensitivities through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Ocean Modelling, 33, 145-158, doi:10.1016/j.ocemod.2010.02.002, 2010.

2008

Campin, J-M., J. Marshall and D. Ferreira (2008) Sea-ice ocean coupling using a rescaled vertical coordinate z*. Ocean Modeling, 24, 1-14.

2007

Adcroft, A.J., Hill, C.N. and J. Marshall, (1997) Representation of topography by shaved cells in a height coordinate ocean model  Mon Wea Rev, vol 125, 2293-2315

2005

Heimbach, P., C. Hill and R. Giering, 2005: An efficient exact adjoint of the parallel MIT general circulation model, generated via automatic differentiation. Future Generation Computer Systems, 21(8), 1356-1371, doi:10.1016/j.future.2004.11.010.

2004

Adcroft, A., J-M Campin, C. Hill and J. Marshall (2004) Implementation of an atmosphere-ocean general circulation model on the expanded spherical cube.  Mon. Wea. Rev., 132 (12), 2845-2863

Campin, J-M., A Adcroft, C. Hill and J. Marshall (2004) Conservation of properties in a free surface model. Ocean Modelling, Vol 6, 221-244.

Adcroft, A., Hill, C., Campin J-M, Marshall, J. and P. Heimbach, 2004: Overview of the Formulation and Numerics of the MIT GCM.  Proceedings of the ECMWF seminar series on Numerical Methods, Recent developments in numerical methods for atmosphere and ocean modelling, 139-149.

Marshall, J. A. Adcroft, J-M Campin and C. Hill (2004) Atmosphere-ocean modeling exploiting fluid isomorphisms.  Mon. Wea. Rev., 132 (12), 2882-2894

2003

U. Naumann and P. Heimbach, 2003: Coupling tangent-linear and adjoint models. in: V. Kumar, M. Gavrilova, C.J.K. Tan, P. L’Ecuyer (Eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol. 2668, part II, pp. 105-114, Springer-Verlag.

2002

P. Heimbach, C. Hill and R. Giering, 2002: Automatic Generation of Efficient Adjoint Code for a Parallel Navier-Stokes Solver. in: J.J. Dongarra, P.M.A. Sloot and C.J.K. Tan (Eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol. 2330, part II, pp. 1019-1028, Springer-Verlag.

1999

 Adcroft, A., Hill C. and J. Marshall: (1999) A new treatment of the Coriolis terms in C-grid models at both high and low resolutions, Mon. Wea. Rev. Vol 127, pages 1928-1936

Hill, C, Adcroft,A., Jamous,D., and J. Marshall, (1999) A Strategy for Terascale Climate Modeling. In Proceedings of the Eighth ECMWF Workshop on the Use of Parallel Processors in Meteorology, pages 406-425 World Scientific Publishing Co: UK

Marotzke, J, Giering,R., Zhang, K.Q., Stammer,D., Hill,C., and T.Lee, (1999) Construction of the adjoint MIT ocean general circulation model and application to Atlantic heat transport variability J. Geophysical Res., 104(C12), 29,529-29,547.

1998

Marshall, J., Jones, H. and C. Hill, (1998) Efficient ocean modeling using non-hydrostatic algorithms Journal of Marine Systems, 18, 115-134

1997

Marshall, J., C. Hill, L. Perelman, and A. Adcroft, (1997) Hydrostatic, quasi-hydrostatic, and nonhydrostatic ocean modeling J. Geophysical Res., 102(C3), 5733-5752.

Marshall, J., A. Adcroft, C. Hill, L. Perelman, and C. Heisey, (1997) A finite-volume, incompressible Navier Stokes model for studies of the ocean on parallel computers, J. Geophysical Res., 102(C3), 5753-5766.

Adcroft, A.J., Hill, C.N. and J. Marshall, (1997) Representation of topography by shaved cells in a height coordinate ocean model Mon Wea Rev, vol 125, 2293-2315