COSIMA 2019 Report

This report summarises the fourth meeting of the Consortium for Ocean Sea Ice Modelling in Australia (COSIMA), held in Canberra on 3-4 September 2019. Shweta Sharma has provided a more informal (and entertaining) report here.

Aims & Goals

The annual COSIMA workshop aims to:

  • Maintain and grow the established community around ocean-sea ice modelling in Australia;
  • Discuss recent scientific advances in ocean and sea ice research in a forum that is inclusive and model-agnostic, particularly including observational programs;
  • Agree on immediate next steps in the COSIMA model development plan; and
  • Develop a long-term vision for ocean-sea ice model development to support Australian researchers.

Participants


Attendees included Alberto Alberello (U Adelaide), Christopher Bladwell (UNSW), Fabio Boeira Dias (UTAS/CSIRO), Gary Brassington (BOM), Matt Chamberlain (CSIRO), Navid Constantinou (ANU), Prasanth Divakaran (BOM), Kelsey Druken (NCI), Matthew England (UNSW), Ben Evans (NCI), Hakase Hayashida (IMAS, UTAS), Petra Heil (AAD & AAPP), Andy Hogg (ANU), Ryan Holmes (UNSW), Maurice Huguenin (UNSW), Yi Jin (CSIRO), Andrew Kiss (ANU), Andreas Klocker (UTAS), Qian Li (UNSW), Kewei Lyu (CSIRO), Simon Marsland (CSIRO), Josue Martinez Moreno (ANU), Richard Matear (CSIRO), Ruth Moorman (ANU), Adele Morrison (ANU), Eric Mortenson (CSIRO), Jemima Rama (ANU), Paul Sandery (CSIRO), Abhishek Savita (UTAS/IMAS/CSIRO), Callum Shakespeare (ANU), Shweta Sharma (UNSW), Callum Shaw (ANU), Taimoor Sohail (ANU), Paul Spence (UNSW), Kial Stewart (ANU), Veronica Tamsitt (UNSW), Mirko Velic (BOM), Nick Velzeboer (ANU), Jingbo Wang (NCI), Xuebin Zhang (CSIRO), Xihan Zhang (ANU), Aihong Zhong (BOM), plus those who attended via video conference.

Program

Tuesday 3rd September

Session 1 (Chair – Navid Constantinou)

Andrew Kiss (ANU): ACCESS-OM2 update
Simon Marsland (CSIRO): ACCESS and CMIP6
Hakase Hayashida (IMAS, UTAS): Preliminary results of biogeochemistry simulation with ACCESS-OM2 and plans for OMIP-BGC and IAMIP
Ben Evans (NCI): Addressing the next HPC challenges for Climate and Weather

Session 2 (Chair – Andreas Klocker)

Veronica Tamsitt (UNSW): Lagrangian pathways and residence time of warm Circumpolar Deep Water on the Antarctic continental shelf
Ruth Moorman (ANU): Response of Antarctic ocean circulation to increased glacial meltwater
Kewei Lyu (CSIRO): Southern Ocean heat uptake and redistribution in theoretical framework and model perturbation experiments
Fabio Boeira Dias (UTAS/CSIRO): High-latitude Southern Ocean response to changes in surface momentum, heat and freshwater fluxes under 2xCO2 concentration

Session 3 (Chair – Simon Marsland)

Xuebin Zhang (CSIRO): Dynamical downscaling of climate changes with OFAM3
Matt Chamberlain (CSIRO): Multiscale data assimilation in Bluelink Reanalysis
Paul Sandery (CSIRO): A data assimilation framework for ocean-sea-ice prediction
Prasanth Divakaran (Bureau of Meteorology): OceanMAPS 3.3 Developments

Wednesday 4th September

Session 4 (Chair – Veronica Tamsitt)

Ryan Holmes (UNSW):  Atlantic ocean heat transport enabled by Indo-Pacific heat uptake and mixing
Eric Mortenson (CSIRO): Decoupling of carbon and heat uptake rates of the global ocean over the 21st century
Christopher Bladwell (UNSW): Diahaline transport in global ocean models
Abhishek Savita (UTAS, IMAS, CSIRO): Uncertainty in the estimation of global and regional ocean heat content since 1970
Gary Brassington (BOM): Comparison of ACCESS-OM2-01 to other models and observations

Session 5 (Chair – Qian Li)

Xihan Zhang (ANU): Gulf Stream separation in ACCESS-OM2
Alberto Alberello (U Adelaide): Impacts of winter cyclones on sea ice dynamics
Petra Heil (AAD): Sea ice in the ACCESS-OM2-01: Exploring near-coastal processes

COSIMA Discussion (Chair – Paul Spence)

Open discussion highlighted a number of potential avenues for work in the near-term, as well as some suggestions for directions that could be included in a future COSIMA funding bid.

Near-term Priorities

  • Running the COSIMA cookbook on the VDI is becoming untenable, and recent improvements in the cookbook have not been widely adopted. This should be a priority, possibly with a tutorial session at the CLEx Annual Workshop?
  • Start investigating coupled data assimilation for parameter estimation, especially for sea ice.
  • Start serious perturbation experiments with ACCESS-OM2-01, potentially including:
    • SAMx (RYF forcing with SAM Extreme Years).
    • Adding katabatic winds?
    • Tropical mixing and the AMOC.
    • Influence of the Amundsen Sea Low on the Southern Ocean.
    • Turbulent Kinetic Energy and winds in the Southern Ocean.
  • OMIP2 contribution for CMIP6.
  • Improve communication of COSIMA achievements.
  • Begin work on nesting regional MOM6 models.

Longer term suggestions

  • Better connection with Paleo community.
  • Improve links with the wave community.
  • Start running ensemble simulations?
  • Do we need to move to CICE6?
  • Capacity to run future scenarios based on coupled model output.

It was agreed that COSIMA V will be held in 2020, hosted by Xuebin Zhang in Hobart.

Additional discussion points are given here.

Awards

The COSIMA Most Selfless Contributor Awards for 2017, 2018 and 2019 were presented in absentia to

  • 2017 James Munroe
  • 2018 Marshall Ward
  • 2019 Russ Fiedler (pictured)

in appreciation of their tireless efforts which have greatly improved the software used by the COSIMA community.