GENIE-M: a new and improved GENIE-1 developed in Minnesota

K. Matsumoto (1) , K. S. Tokos (1) , A. Price (2) , S. Cox (2)

1 Department of Geology and Geophysics [Minneapolis]
2 Southampton e-Science Center

Here we describe GENIE-M, a new and improved version of the Grid ENabled Integrated Earth system model (GENIE), which is a 3-D earth system model of intermediate complexity. Main development goals of GENIE-M were to: (1) bring oceanic uptake of anthropogenic transient tracers within data constraints; (2) increase vertical resolution in the upper ocean to better represent near-surface biogeochemical processes; (3) calibrate the deep ocean ventilation with observed abundance of radiocarbon. We achieved all these goals through a transparent process of calibration that mostly consisted of objective model optimization. An important new feature in GENIE-M that dramatically improved the uptake of CFC-11 and anthropogenic carbon is the depth dependent vertical diffusivity in the ocean, which is spatially uniform in GENIE-1. In GENIE-M, biological production occurs in the top two layers above the compensation depth of 100 m and is modified, for example, by diagnosed mixed layer depth. In contrast, production in GENIE-1 occurs in a single layer with thickness of 175 m. These improvements make GENIE-M a well-calibrated model of intermediate complexity suitable for investigations of the global marine carbon cycle requiring long integration time.

Domaines: Sciences de la Terre

K. Matsumoto, K. S. Tokos, A. Price, S. Cox. GENIE-M: a new and improved GENIE-1 developed in Minnesota. Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 2008, 1 (1), pp.1-37. ⟨hal-00298260⟩