Explosive Convective Adjustment in a Hydrostatic Ocean Model

Résumé du livre

The hydrostatic fourth-order-accurate semi-collocated (modified Arakawa "a" grid) DieCAST Ocean Model simulates explosive convective adjustment, including less-than-complete watermass mixing and counter diffusive processes not addressable by popular diffusive convective adjustment approaches. This is shown by model application to explosively unstable 3-d flow over a slope. Even with such explosively unstable initial state, the hydrostatic DieCAST model gives robust and rapid stabilization through unstable plume dynamics. The degree of watermass mixing during convective adjustment is sensitive to the model Prandtl number, which may be chosen to mimic the effective turbulent Prandtl number of convective adjustment in the ocean.