A ROMS-Tools Deep Dive

Configuring a regional ocean model is a major technical challenge: generating the required input files is time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to reproduce, creating a bottleneck for both new and experienced model users. 

The ROMS-Tools Python package addresses these challenges by providing user-friendly tools to design new regional grids, streamlining the creation of the input files necessary to run either a fully-coupled physical and biogeochemical model of the ocean—such as with our ROMS-MARBL integration—or a UCLA ROMS simulation without MARBL biogeochemistry.

In order to run properly, ROMS requires a number of bespoke input files to be generated before simulations can even be run, including the model grid, initial conditions, surface and boundary forcing, and other forcing inputs including tides, rivers, and CDR interventions. ROMS-Tools can automatically process commonly used datasets or incorporate custom user data and routines to generate these inputs.

In this presentation, Nora Loose, PhD, [C]Worthy Staff Scientist for Ocean Modeling and AI as well as the lead developer of ROMS-Tools, leads a deep dive not only into its ROMS input file generation capabilities, but also some included utilities for postprocessing and analysis, particularly for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV).

Explore ROMS-Tools:

https://roms-tools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/