Data-intensive modeling of non-hydrostatic flow reveals previously unrecognized physical processes

In “Hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic simulations of dense waters cascading off a shelf: The East Greenland case”, IDIES affiliate Thomas Haine and collaborator Marcello Magaldi report results from their most ambitious ocean circulation simulation to date. Using the Homewood High Performance Cluster they computed very high resolution solutions of the currents near Greenland. Switching on non-hydrostatic dynamics — ordinarily ignored by ocean modelers — made the calculations much more demanding, but revealed new features, such as internal gravity waves, which are not properly resolved by hydrostatic models. The teams’ findings underscore the important of using computationally-expensive models in understanding the dynamics of ocean currents.

Marcello G. Magaldi, Thomas W.N. Haine, Hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic simulations of dense waters cascading off a shelf: The East Greenland case, Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, Volume 96, February 2015, Pages 89-104, ISSN 0967-0637, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967063714001915.