ClimaOcean.jl

🌎 Tools for building realistic ocean-only and coupled ocean + sea-ice simulations based on Oceananigans and ClimaSeaIce.

To install from a Julia REPL:

julia> using Pkg

julia> Pkg.add(url="https://github.com/CliMA/ClimaOcean.jl.git")

julia> Pkg.instantiate()

Use Pkg.add("url=https://github.com/CliMA/ClimaOcean.jl.git", rev="main") to install the latest version of ClimaOcean. For more information, see the documentation for Pkg.jl.

ClimaOcean is for realistic ocean-only and ocean + sea-ice simulations, in a region of the ocean ("regional") or covering the whole Earth. Oceananigans is a lower-level package for simulating the dynamics of ocean-flavored fluids that can be used for both idealized problems and, given enough effort, realistic problems as well. While "idealized" problems come in multifarious shapes and sizes, "realistic" problems tend to be more narrowly defined, and require

• Simulating the evolution of specific tracers: ocean temperature (or heat), salinity, and sometimes ocean biogeochemistry.
• Computing fluxes of heat, water vapor, momentum, and trace gases between the ocean and atmosphere (where the atmospheric state is either prescribed or "coupled" and itself evolving) -- and also between sea ice and the atmosphere, when a sea ice component is included.
• Initializing the ocean model with realistic initial conditions derived from observations of the ocean, and realistic bathymetry.

ClimaOcean leverages Oceananigans and ClimaSeaIce to build OceanSeaIceModels capable of meeting these requirements to simulate the dynamics of specific regions of the Earth's ocean. So if you're using ClimaOcean, it's a very good idea to become proficient in Oceananigans as well. Note also that, at least at the moment, ClimaOcean is focused on hydrostatic modeling with Oceananigans' HydrostaticFreeSurfaceModel.

In summary, if you're interested in realistic, hydrostatic regional or global simulations you may find ClimaOcean useful. Otherwise, you can stick with Oceananigans.