GRID TRANSFORMATION FOR INCORPORATING THE ARCTIC IN A GLOBAL OCEAN MODEL

A grid transformation is described which isolates the Arctic and North Atlantic, rotates the spherical grid to pass an ''equator'' up the Atlantic through the north pole and remaps the Coriolis parameter. Boundary condition information is exchanged along the equatorial Atlantic so that the Arctic-Atlantic model is dynamically coupled to a model of the rest of the global ocean (which remains on the geographic spherical grid). The transform produces a more ''regular'' grid over the Arctic and eliminates the need for filtering or special treatment at the pole. The transform has been implemented in the GFDL Modular Ocean Model, After testing with idealized geometry, a 300 y global integration is compared to an integration using the geographic spherical grid and Fourier filtering. Results are similar, with differences in the Arctic and western North Atlantic regions leading to smaller air-sea heat flux near the Gulf Stream separation latitude for the transform case. Use of the transform also leads to a reduction in computation time.