In the period 1994-97, POP was used to perform high resolution (0.28° at the Equator) global ocean simulations, running on the Thinking Machines CM5 computer then located at LANL's Advanced Computing Laboratory. (Output from these runs is available at http://climate.acl.lanl.gov. The primary motivation for performing such high-resolution simulations is to resolve mesoscale eddies that play an important role in the dynamics of the ocean. Comparison of sea-surface height variability measured by the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite with that simulated by POP gave convincing evidence that still higher resolution was required (Fu and Smith[9]; Maltrud[15]).
At the time, it was not possible to do a higher resolution calculation on the global scale, so an Atlantic Ocean simulation was done with 0.1° resolution at the Equator. This calculation agreed well with observations of sea-surface height variability in the Gulf Stream. Many other features of the flow were also well simulated (Smith et al [20]). Using the 0.1° case as a benchmark, lower resolution cases were done at 0.2° and 0.4°; a comparison can be found at http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/oce/bryan/woce-poster.html.
Recently, it has become possible to begin a 0.1° global simulation and such a simulation has been started. In addition, higher resolution North Atlantic simulations have also been initiated.