Arakawa C-Grids

This section covers the fundamentals of staggered grids for ocean modeling.

Introduction¶

The Arakawa C-grid is the standard staggering arrangement used in ocean general circulation models. Variables are placed at different locations on the grid cell:

• h (sea surface height, tracers) at cell centers

• u (zonal velocity) on east/west cell faces

• v (meridional velocity) on north/south cell faces

• vorticity at cell corners (nodes)

Why Staggered Grids?¶

Staggered grids avoid the computational mode (checkerboard instability) that arises with co-located grids, and naturally represent the divergence and curl operators.

finitevolX¶

The finitevolX library provides the discrete operators on Arakawa C-grids used by somax. See the finitevolX repository for details.