Validation of Ocean General Circulation Model (FMS-MOM4) in Relation with Climatological and Argo Data

Ocean general circulation model developed by GFDL on the basis of MOM4 of FMS are examined and evaluated in order to elucidate the global ocean status. The model employs a tripolar grid system to resolve the Arctic Ocean without polar filtering. The meridional resolution gradually increases from 1/3 at the equator to 1 at 30 N(S). Other horizontal grids have the constant 1 and vertical grids with 50 levels. The ocean is also coupled to the GFDL sea ice model. It considers tidal effects along with fresh water and chlorophyll concentration. This model is integrated for a 100 year duration with 96 cpu forced by German OM113 and CORE dataset. Levitus, WOA01 climatology, serial CTD observations, WOCE and Argo data are all used for model validation. General features of the world ocean circulation are well simulated except for the western boundary and coastal region where strong advection or fresh water flux are dominant. However, we can find that information concerning chlorophyll and sea ice, newly applied to MOM4 as surface boundary condition, can be used to reduce a model bias near the equatorial and North Pacific ocean.