14 Scientific Requirements

The design of the Coupler and the CCSM modeling framework were motivated by a variety of scientific and software design issues. Following are some of the major design and functionality considerations which addressed the deficiencies of standard coupling strategies at the time of Coupler's inception (circa 1991), and which have continued to be important considerations.

(a)

System decomposition and component model code independence
The CCSM coupling strategy and the Coupler component (see Figure 1) allows an intuitive decomposition of the large and complex climate system model. To a large extent, the separate component models, atmosphere, sea-ice, land, and ocean, can be designed, developed, and maintained independently, and later "plugged into" the Coupler to create a complete climate system model. At the highest design level, this creates a highly desirable design trait of creating natural modules (or "objects") with maximum internal cohesion and minimal external coupling.

(b)

Control of the execution and time evolution of the system.
The Coupler (a natural choice), rather than one of the component models (any of which would be an arbitrary and asymmetrical choice), is responsible for controlling the execution and time evolution of the complete system.

(c)

The appropriate boundary condition for all component models are the fluxes across the surface interfaces.
In terms of the climate simulation, the Coupler (originally called the "Flux Coupler") couples component models by providing flux boundary conditions to all component models. State variables flow through the Coupler only if necessary for a flux calculation in the Coupler or a component model.

(d)

Conservation of fluxed quantities.
The Coupler can conserve all fluxed quantities that pass through it. Since all surface fluxes pass through the Coupler, this framework assures that all surface fluxes in the system are conserved. The Coupler also can and does monitor flux conservation by doing spatial and temporal averages of all fluxed quantities.

(e)

A flux field should should be computed only once, in one component, and then the field should be given to other components, as necessary.
For example, generally the resolution of the ocean component is finer than that of the atmospheric component. Heat is not conserved if the atmosphere component computes long wave radiation using sea surface temperature (SST) averaged onto the atmosphere's grid, while the ocean component uses individual grid point SSTs. This is because the flux calculation is proportional to $SST^4$ (is non-linear) and the two calculations will yield two different results . Instead of trying to compute the same flux twice, on two different grids in two different components, the flux should be computed once and then be mapped, in a conservative manner, to other component grids.

(f)

Fluxes can be computed in the most desirable place.
For example, when an atmospheric grid box covers both land and ocean, a problem arises if wind stress is first computed on the atmospheric grid and then interpolated to the ocean grid. If land roughness is significantly larger than ocean roughness (as is typical), and the atmosphere uses an average underlying roughness to compute the wind-stress, and then wind-stress is interpolated to coastal land and ocean cells, wind-stress will be considerably lower (for land) or higher (for ocean) than it should be. This approach can lead to unrealistic coastal ocean circulations. In this case it is more desirable to compute the surface stresses on the surface grids and subsequently merge and map them to the atmospheric grid. Thus this calculation should take place in either the Coupler, land, ice, or ocean models.

In the case of computing precipitation, because this calculation requires full 3D atmospheric fields, and because only 2D surface fields are exchanged through the Coupler, this calculation should take place in the atmosphere component.

(g)

Allowing the coupling of component models with different spatial grids.
In general it is desirable to allow the different component models to exist on different spatial grids. It is also desirable that a component model need not be aware of, or concerned with, the spatial grids that other component models are using. The Coupler handles all mapping between disparate model grids, allows component models to remain unaware and unconcerned with the spatial grids of other CCSM components.

Due to scientific considerations, the current version of CCSM requires that the atmosphere and land components be on the same spatial grid. Because it is not a requirement to do so, the Coupler does not have the functionality to allow the atmosphere and land to be on different grids. Similarly, the current version of CCSM requires that ocean and sea-ice components be on the same grid and the Coupler does not have the functionality to allow them to be on different grids.

Except as noted above, no component needs to know what spatial grid other components are using. The Coupler is responsible for all mapping between the various spatial grids of the various components models. The component models themselves have no knowledge of what other grids are involved in the coupled system and they can remain unconcerned with any issues regarding mapping between grids.

(h)

Allowing the coupling of models with different time steps.
While there are some restrictions on what internal time step models are allowed to use (for example, there must be an integer number of time steps per day), the Coupler offers component models considerable freedom in choosing their internal time step. Frequently all four CCSM components operate with four different internal time steps.