A linear continuously stratified (LCS) ocean model

LCS ocean model is a dynamical ocean model, which is basically McCreary’s (1981) linear continuously stratified ocean model, extended to all tropical oceans with a more realistic coastline and a space-dependent background stratification (see model fomulations in Text S1 of Zhao et al. 2021). The shallow water equations are solved separately for each baroclinic mode, and the total solution is the linear sum of low-order baroclinic modes. It has been shown that the stratified model with two (or more) baroclinic modes performs significantly better than the 1.5-layer reduced gravity model. Using both local vertical modes and spatially varying wind projection coefficients based on the WKBJ approximation gives a noticeably more realistic sea level and current structure.

Citation

The LCS package is described in the follow paper, which should be referenced if you use the LCS model in publications:

Availability of the code

If you are interested in using the LCS model, please email me at zhaos@hawaii.edu with a brief description of your intended use.