= Executive Summary = 



This document describes the development and current status of the web NEMO configurations data base definition, development and implementation. The goal of this work is to document the diversity of the simulations that can be achieved with the ocean model NEMO and illustrate the impacts of different configurations of the same code.



To do this, we established and delivered a standard experiment protocol and a complete set of diagnostics to be applied to NEMO outputs in order to qualify and quantify the biases of simulations and the differences between existing experiments. All information and source code are available on [http://forge.ipsl.jussieu.fr/nemo/wiki/core2_cmip http://forge.ipsl.jussieu.fr/nemo/wiki/core2_cmip] and all simulations can be found on the following DODS server: [http://dodsp.idris.fr/reee605/ http://dodsp.idris.fr/reee605/]

= 1. INTRODUCTION =

The main goal of this task is to make model developers and users aware of the important difference existing between a model version and a model configuration. This is a key point to ensure transparency and comprehension of the work done around climate models. The same model version can indeed be used in numerous configurations (physical options, choice of parameterizations, horizontal and vertical grid description and resolution, definition of the initial state...) that can lead to very different results. The model inter-comparisons on which is based a large part of IPCC report from Working group 1, are exploring differences between models. We are here illustrating differences between different configurations of the same model.



In this part of WP4, we are therefore targeting:

 1) to document the diversity of the simulations that can be achieved with the ocean model NEMO in order to demonstrate the importance of a complete description of the model configuration. [[BR]]
 2) to constitute a data base illustrating the impacts of different configurations of the same code. This catalogue of simulations based on the same model but with different configurations will later on be used to understand the processes at stake in ocean modelling. [[BR]]
 3) to establish and deliver a standard experiment protocol that could be used by researchers to validate their own implementation of NEMO. Next, this protocol will be used to explore and quantify the specificities of a configuration of a particular user.


= 2. experimental Protocol =


We decided to follow the experimental protocol defined by the CLIVAR Working Group on Ocean Model Development ([http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ocemod.2008.08.007 Griffies et al. 2009]). We therefore adopt the standard Common Ocean-ice Reference Experiments dataset (CORE2) to force the model ([http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0441-3 Large and Yearger 2009]) that is available for download from the [http://data1.gfdl.noaa.gov/nomads/forms/mom4/COREv2.html GFDL server]. This dataset contains the air-sea fluxes of momentum, heat, fresh-water computed globally at frequencies ranging from 6-hourly to monthly. This dataset provides either one normal year of forcing (to force long climatological simulations) or 60 years interannual forcing (1948-2007, to force simulations over the recent period).

We decided to conduct 2 kinds of experiments:

 * a 2000-year long simulation forced with the perpetual normal year
 * a 180-year long simulation made of 3 time 60 years of the interannual forcing


The preparation of the input files has been done through [https://code.zmaw.de/projects/cdo cdo] and [http://nco.sourceforge.net/ nco]. This work is make up of 3 parts:

 1) mask the continents [[BR]]
 2) fill masked values with neighbouring oceanic values [[BR]]
 3) interpolation on ORCA grid with bilinear (scalar) or bicubic interpolation (vector) [[BR]]

Note that the 3rd point is not absolutely needed as NEMO can perform "on the fly interpolation". The rotation of the vector on ORCA grid is done within the code.

The complete description of this work is given on NEMO web page: [http://www.nemo-ocean.eu/Using-NEMO/Pre-and-post-processing-packages/Pre-Processing/cdo-interpolation http://www.nemo-ocean.eu/Using-NEMO/Pre-and-post-processing-packages/Pre-Processing/cdo-interpolation]. Interpolated data can be found at [http://dodsp.idris.fr/reee605/CORE2_clima/ http://dodsp.idris.fr/reee605/CORE2_clima/] and [http://dodsp.idris.fr/reee605/CORE2_interan/ http://dodsp.idris.fr/reee605/CORE2_interan/]