I am trying to refine a global coupled model I have developed.
Somewhere in one of the NEMO manuals it says,
" When a global ocean is coupled to an atmospheric model it is better to represent all large water bodies (e.g, great lakes, Caspian sea…) even if the model resolution does not allow their communication with the rest of the ocean. This is unnecessary when the ocean is forced by fixed atmospheric conditions, so these seas can be removed from the ocean domain. The user has the option to set the bathymetry in closed seas to zero (see §15.2), but the code has to be adapted to the user’s configuration.”
I am currently thinking of doing this manually by editing an ORCA025 configuration to agree better with my atmospheric grid that treats the Caspian Sea and many smaller bodies of water as ocean. I have implemented a 0-d column model to handle slight mismatches at coastlines and small closed bodies of water, but I’d like NEMO to simulate larger closed bodies of water.
Does anyone have a sense of how big the body of water needs to be? I’d like to avoid instabilities, so I’m going to avoid straits etc. But I’m not sure if Lake Baikal (long and thin) is too thin (~ 2 grid points) to simulate in NEMO.
Thanks for any insights,
Nick