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FVCOM is a prognostic, unstructured-grid, finite-volume, free-surface, 3-D primitive equation coastal ocean circulation model developed by UMASSD-WHOI joint efforts.
The model consists of momentum, continuity, temperature, salinity and density equations and is closed physically and mathematically using turbulence closure submodels. The horizontal grid is comprised of unstructured triangular cells and the irregular bottom is preseented using generalized terrain-following coordinates.
The General Ocean Turbulent Model (GOTM) developed by Burchard’s research group in Germany (Burchard, 2002) has been added to FVCOM to provide optional vertical turbulent closure schemes. FVCOM is solved numerically by a second-order accurate discrete flux calculation in the integral form of the governing equations over an unstructured triangular grid. This approach combines the best features of finite-element methods (grid flexibility) and finite-difference methods (numerical efficiency and code simplicity) and provides a much better numerical representation of both local and global momentum, mass, salt, heat, and tracer conservation.
The ability of FVCOM to accurately solve scalar conservation equations in addition to the topological flexibility provided by unstructured meshes and the simplicity of the coding structure has make FVCOM ideally suited for many coastal and interdisciplinary scientific applications.
Many of the examples and procedures described in this wiki have been the contribution of mostly PML employees and reflect our learning journey. As such, they are not intended to be comprehsenive. Contributions from other parties are acknowledged in their respective sections.
While the vast majority of the examples use Matlab code from the fvcom-toolbox, at PML we have been using PyFVCOM since 2019. We will update the wiki to reflect usage of the new resource as time permits. If you want to contribute feel free to contact us!
- VisIt - a free interactive parallel visualization and graphical analysis tool for viewing scientific data on Unix and PC platforms
- fvcom-toolbox - a MATLAB toolbox for generating FVCOM input files and processing output files
- SMS - proprietary Windows software to generate unstructured grids for use in FVCOM
- PyFVCOM - an ever-growing toolbox of tools in Python to read FVCOM model outputs and perform FVCOM post-processing
- PySeidon - a Python post-processing library which performs a number of analyses (e.g. harmonic analysis) of FVCOM outputs.
- MATLAB - An example MATLAB script for plotting FVCOM output
The pages below outline some useful data sets which have been used with FVCOM. This includes instructions on how to use the FVCOM matlab toolbox to obtain and process these data.
- The NCEP Reanalysis 2 outputs
- The Met Office's Unified Model and its outputs
- How to convert the Met Office's Unified Model outputs to netCDF
Archived presentations and notes from previous workshops.
Users share here their experiences and work flows to setup and run a domain. These range from idealised setups accessible through the gitlab repository to real life implementations
- [Firth of Forth](Firth of Forth#Marine Scotland)
- Idealised estuary#Plymouth Marine Laboratory
- Lymebay#Plymouth Marine Laboratory
- Conway domain
Background
=== FVCOM Wiki ===
User guide
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Additional information of less frequent usage in no particular order
How to cite
Licensing and copyright
Acknowledgements
Policy
