CCM0 "Wind Fields"

Mpeg animation from the Community Climate Model (CCM0).

CCM0 ("c-c-m-zero") was a state-of-the-art General Circulation Model in the early '80s. There is no external forcing, "perpetual January", but the model distinguishes between land and ocean and includes a simple convection process. The model is run on a 7.5° by 4.4° grid (R15) and the model state vector is approximately 18Kb. This run is made available by Grant Branstator.

The model time step is 30 minutes and the model state is output twice per day for more than 1 million days but the animation is only over the first 500. Shown is the 300mb stream function. This field is the nondivergent part of the horizontal wind field at the 300mb pressure level and is a useful summary of the flow in the Northern Hemisphere at mid-latitudes. (The Laplacian of the stream function is the vorticity.)