Articles | Volume 19, issue 21
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-10321-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-10321-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Model evaluation paper
| 
30 Oct 2026
Model evaluation paper |
| 30 Oct 2026
| 30 Oct 2026
Towards high-fidelity simulations of coastal submesoscale baroclinic instabilities with MPAS-O (vE3SM3.0.0) – Part 1: Idealized experiments
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
Dylan R. Schlichting
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
Robert D. Hetland
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
Darren Engwirda
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Hobart, TAS, Australia
Katherine M. Smith
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
Mark R. Petersen
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
Kaila Uyeda
Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA
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River plumes can strongly influence coastal dynamics but are poorly resolved in global ocean models. Building on a companion study, we perform high-resolution simulations of the Mississippi–Atchafalaya (M–A) plume with the Model for Prediction Across Scales–Ocean (MPAS–O), a global model, and compare with a limited-domain Regional Ocean Modeling System configuration. MPAS–O qualitatively captures the M–A plume seasonality but fails to generate realistic eddies on the Texas–Louisiana shelf.
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Katherine M. Smith, Alice M. Barthel, LeAnn M. Conlon, Luke P. Van Roekel, Anthony Bartoletti, Jean-Christophe Golaz, Chengzhu Zhang, Carolyn Branecky Begeman, James J. Benedict, Gautam Bisht, Yan Feng, Walter Hannah, Bryce E. Harrop, Nicole Jeffery, Wuyin Lin, Po-Lun Ma, Mathew E. Maltrud, Mark R. Petersen, Balwinder Singh, Qi Tang, Teklu Tesfa, Jonathan D. Wolfe, Shaocheng Xie, Xue Zheng, Karthik Balaguru, Oluwayemi Garuba, Peter Gleckler, Aixue Hu, Jiwoo Lee, Ben Moore-Maley, and Ana C. Ordoñez
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Huilin Huang, Yun Qian, Gautam Bisht, Jiali Wang, Tirthankar Chakraborty, Dalei Hao, Jianfeng Li, Travis Thurber, Balwinder Singh, Zhao Yang, Ye Liu, Pengfei Xue, William J. Sacks, Ethan Coon, and Robert Hetland
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Adrian K. Turner, William H. Lipscomb, Elizabeth C. Hunke, Douglas W. Jacobsen, Nicole Jeffery, Darren Engwirda, Todd D. Ringler, and Jonathan D. Wolfe
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Milena Veneziani, Wieslaw Maslowski, Younjoo J. Lee, Gennaro D'Angelo, Robert Osinski, Mark R. Petersen, Wilbert Weijer, Anthony P. Craig, John D. Wolfe, Darin Comeau, and Adrian K. Turner
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We present an Earth system model (ESM) simulation, E3SM-Arctic-OSI, with a refined grid to better resolve the Arctic ocean and sea-ice system and low spatial resolution elsewhere. The configuration satisfactorily represents many aspects of the Arctic system and its interactions with the sub-Arctic, while keeping computational costs at a fraction of those necessary for global high-resolution ESMs. E3SM-Arctic can thus be an efficient tool to study Arctic processes on climate-relevant timescales.
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Short summary
Physical dynamics of ocean flows at fine spatial scales are challenging for regional and global scale ocean models due to high computational effort associated with smaller grid cell sizes. We compared two ocean models: a regional model (ROMS; Regional Ocean Modeling System) and global model (MPAS-O; Model for Prediction Across Scales – Ocean) across a range of resolutions (10 km to 100 m) in an idealized domain, and found that their similarities may hold promise for future coupling between them.
Physical dynamics of ocean flows at fine spatial scales are challenging for regional and global...
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