Information about NCOM Release 1.4.0

NCAR CSM Ocean Model

July 1998

NCAR CSM Ocean Model (NCOM 1.4.0 July 1998)

A primitive-equation ocean model upgraded by the 


                    NCAR Oceanography Section
                    National Center for Atmospheric Research1
                    PO Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307

This model is based upon, but differs substantially from the
GFDL Modular Ocean Model (MOM 1.1)
which was implemented by 

                    R.C. Pacanowski   K. Dixon    A. Rosati
                    Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory /NOAA
                    Princeton, NJ. 08542


based on the work of
Kirk Bryan: A numerical method for the study of the of the
circulation world ocean: 1969, J. Computat. Phys 4 347-376
and
the invaluable work of Mike Cox & Bert Semtner on earlier Fortran implementations.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Substantial changes to MOM 1.1 have been made in the NCOM, and present MOM 1.1 users should be alert to such changes and familiarize themselves with the many differences. The user should pay particular attention to the added model features and to the list of preprocessor options: many of the MOM 1.1 options have been removed (see checks.F), and several new options have been added.

Users interested in the major changes to the last major release of our model, NCOM 1.3, which resulted in NCOM 1.4.0 should refer to our web document What's New in NCOM 1.4 .

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NCOM Documentation

Documentation of the June 1997 NCOM release is available in the NCAR technical note referenced below. Hard-copies of the technical note were distributed at the May 1996 and June 1997 CSM Workshops; electronic copies are also available.

NCOM 1.4.0 documentation is available only from the NCOM website.

The NCOM user is encouraged to periodically check our website for code updates and announcements. New and updated links may become available after the official NCOM 1.4 release date of July 17, 1998.

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General Notes on NCOM 1.4.0

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Description of Tar File Contents

The NCOM distribution (ncom1.4.0.tar.gz) consists of the NCOM 1.4 Fortran source code and a collection of shell scripts. (See the ascii file with a diagram of the ncom1.4.0 structure.)

Users may notice the absence of the netCDF_Filters directory in NCOM Release 1.4.0. These filter files are obsolete, because netcdf history files can now be produced directly in the model at run-time.