Rainer Bleck, LANL, and Shan Sun, NASA/GISS
Spiciness is defined as the thermodynamic state variable which is orthogonal to density in T/S space. Time-stepping the mass field in an isopycnic model by advecting spiciness together with density, instead of advecting salinity/density, would alleviate the ill-posedness of diagnosing T from density and S near the freezing point. Due to the difficulty of obtaining explicit solutions for T,S from given values of density and spiciness, experiments are conducted in which a spiciness- like l i n e a r combination of T and S is advected in conjunction with density. Results from these experiments, both ocean-alone and ocean-atmosphere coupled, are discussed.