Vertical mixing is an important process, for example, for tropical sea surface temperature, but cannot be resolved by ocean models. Comparisons of mixing schemes and settings have usually been done with a single model, sometimes yielding conflicting results. We systematically compare two widely used schemes with different parameter settings in two different ocean models and show that most effects from mixing scheme parameter changes are model-dependent.

In this paper we propose a new alternative to one of the functionalities of the sea ice model FESOM2. The alternative we propose allows the model to capture and simulate fast changes in quantities like sea surface elevation more accurately. We also demonstrate that the new alternative is faster and more adept at taking advantages of highly parallelized computing infrastructure. We therefore show that this new alternative is a great addition to the sea ice model FESOM2.

Sea ice models are a necessary component of climate models. At very high resolution they are capable of simulating linear kinematic features, such as leads, which are important for better prediction of heat exchanges between the ocean and atmosphere. Two new discretizations are described which improve the sea ice component of the Finite volumE Sea ice–Ocean Model (FESOM version 2) by allowing simulations of finer scales.

We developed a new atmosphere–ocean coupled climate model, AWI-CM3. Our model is significantly more computationally efficient than its predecessors AWI-CM1 and AWI-CM2. We show that the model, although cheaper to run, provides results of similar quality when modeling the historic period from 1850 to 2014. We identify the remaining weaknesses to outline future work. Finally we preview an improved simulation where the reduction in computational cost has to be invested in higher model resolution.

Ocean and climate scientists have used numerical simulations as a tool to examine the ocean and climate system since the 1970s. Since then, owing to the continuous increase in computational power and advances in numerical methods, we have been able to simulate increasing complex phenomena. However, the fidelity of the simulations in representing the phenomena remains a core issue in the ocean science community. Here we propose a cloud-based framework to inter-compare and assess such simulations.