[MITgcm-devel] TEOS-10

[David Ferreira]

On 7/15/11 3:57 AM, Martin Losch wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> there is this new equation of state<http://www.teos-10.org>
> I was wondering, if it would be useful to have it in the code as an additional option, but I am not quite clear about the details. At the above web-page there is a set of fortran functions to compute density and alpha/beta from "absolute salinity" and "conservative temperature". I guess, one needs to convert from potential temperature to conservative temperature (although the difference appears to be small) and there is code for that too, and maybe even from absolute to practical scalinity (although I think it would as valid to interpret our variable SALT as absolute salinity).
>
> Are there any opinions on that?
> It should be easy to implement the stuff, but is it also useful?
Just to put my 2 cents. My understanding is that you can always 
interpret the variable "theta" in the GCM as conservative temperature. I 
think this is also true of the "salt" variable and absolute salinity. 
And then, you can compute density from the new equation of state using 
theta and salt.
Problems arise when you compare the outputs of the model to observed 
climatologies, then you have to turn theta into potential temperature 
(ans salt from psu to g/kg).
One thing that sounds strange (and apologies if it's not what you meant) 
is to interpret theta as potential and then to use it as input in TEOS-10.

That said, the effects are probably peanuts, i.e. the adjustments which 
come with the re-interpretation of the variables is an order of 
magnitude smaller than model errors.
david



> Martin
>
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