High-level, high-resolution ocean modeling at all scales with Oceananigans
Abstract
We describe the user interface, governing equations, and numerical methods underpinning the community ocean modeling software called "Oceananigans". Oceananigans development has been lead by the Climate Modeling Alliance to build a trainable climate model with quantifiable uncertainty. Oceananigans is written in the Julia programming language, which, like similar recent efforts based on modern programming languages, distinguishes it from usual software based on Fortran. Oceananigans can efficiently simulate all scales of ocean motion, ranging from millimeter-scale turbulence in a small box to planetary-scale ocean circulation. Oceananigans design combines (i) a basic structured finite volume algorithm (ii) optimized for high-resolution simulations on GPUs which is (iii) exposed behind a high-level, programmable user interface. This design negotiates a dual mandate for highest-possible performance (to support state-of-the-art applications) and enhanced accessibility (to facilitate adoption and development). The dual mandate aims ultimately to accelerate the progress of Earth system science. Achieving this aim, however, requires a substantial and sustained increase in the collective effort of Oceananigans development.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.14148,
title = {High-level, high-resolution ocean modeling at all scales with Oceananigans},
author = {Gregory L. Wagner and Simone Silvestri and Navid C. Constantinou and Ali Ramadhan and Jean-Michel Campin and Chris Hill and Tomas Chor and Jago Strong-Wright and Xin Kai Lee and Francis Poulin and Andre Souza and Keaton J. Burns and Siddhartha Bishnu and John Marshall and Raffaele Ferrari},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.14148},
year = {2025}
}