High Resolution Numerical Modelling of the Atmosphere and Ocean [Hardcover]

This highly relevant text documents the first international meeting focused specifically on high-resolution atmospheric and oceanic modeling. It was held recently at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan. Rather than producing a standard conference proceedings volume, the editors have decided to compose this volume entirely of papers written by invited speakers at the meeting, who report on their most exciting recent results involving high resolution modeling.

Many key issues in dynamical meteorology and physical oceanography depend on interactions among diverse spatial scales. Atmospheric examples are the role of small-scale gravity waves in the zonal-mean momentum balance in the middle atmosphere, the role of tropical cyclones in the large scale energy and momentum balances of the troposphere, or even the direction of spectral cascades of variance in the mesoscale. In the ocean issues of this type include: understanding the detailed physics of the very narrow boundary currents that occur along many coastlines, and the role of mesoscale eddies in determining the strength of the large-scale circulations and meridional ocean heat transports.

Truly comprehensive observational diagnostic studies of these issues are essentially impossible, since they would require the global observational overage at extremely high spatial resolution. An alternative is to study such issues in high resolution models that may span 3 or more orders of magnitude in terms of spatial scales.

There has been a great deal of progress recently on development and application of such fine resolution models. This had been spurred in part by the recent availability of exceptionally powerful computers. Noteworthy in this respect is the Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan, which commenced operations in 2002 and provides a peak performance of 40 Terraflops, but competitive supercomputers for scientl“.