dam_break¶

The ocean/dam_break test group reproducs the dam break test case from Warner et al. (2013).

The domain is a rectangular box divided into a dammed region with sea surface height of 0.6 m and a floodplain region with sea surface height equal to the minimum layer thickness. By default, there are 3 vertical layers. Horizontal resolutions of 40 cm and 120 cm are available.

The test group includes 1 test case. The test case has 3 steps. The initial_state defines the mesh and initial conditions for the model. The forward step runs MPAS-Ocean in forward mode and allows water from the dammed region to flow into the floodplain region. The viz step performs visualization of the time evolution of SSH at a series of sites. These plots are used to compare the MPAS-Ocean output with experimental data and the solution from the ROMS model.

../../../_images/dam_break_validation.png

config options¶

The config options for this test case are:

# Options related to the vertical grid
[vertical_grid]

# Number of vertical levels # redundant with config_dam_break_vert_levels
vert_levels = 3

default¶

ocean/dam_break/${RES}/default is the default version of the dam break test case for validation of sea surface height through visual inspection against experimental data and ROMS solutions. RES is either 40cm or 120cm.

ramp¶

ocean/dam_break/${RES}/ramp is identical to the default test except the factor that scales velocities and velocity tendencies is ramped over a given layer thickness range rather than a binary switch at the minimum thickness. RES is either 40cm or 120cm.

lts¶

Both the default and ramp test cases can be run with the lts variant which uses local time-stepping (LTS) as time integrator. Note that the tests verify the ability of the LTS scheme to run correctly with wetting and drying and are not designed to leverage the LTS capability of producing faster runs.