FORCING AND SAMPLING OF OCEAN GENERAL-CIRCULATION MODELS - IMPACT OF HIGH-FREQUENCY MOTIONS

Significant inertial oscillations are present in all primitive equatio n ocean general circulation models when they are forced with high-freq uency (period order of days) wind stress fields. At specific latitudes the energy of the wind stress forcing near the frequency of the inert ial oscillations excites large amplitudes in the surface kinetic energ y. The frequently used strategy of subsampling model output at several day intervals then leads to aliasing of the energetic inertial curren ts into lower frequencies that vary with latitude, which severely corr upts even integral quantities like meridional heat transport. This not e discusses the effect of forcing and sampling at short periods. Schem es are provided that will remove the aliased energy from the model fie lds stored for later analysis.