About NEMO

The "Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean" (NEMO) is a state-of-the-art modelling framework. It is used for research activities and forecasting services in ocean and climate sciences. NEMO is developed by a European consortium with the objective of ensuring long term reliability and sustainability.

NEMO is distributed under a GNU GPL compatible free licence

Overview

The NEMO ocean model has 3 major components:

  • NEMO-OCE models the ocean {thermo}dynamics and solves the primitive equations
  • NEMO-ICE models sea-ice {thermo}dynamics, brine inclusions and subgrid-scale thickness variations
  • NEMO-TOP-PISCES models the {on,off}line oceanic tracers transport and biogeochemical processes

These physical core engines are described in their respective reference manuals listed below:

Component Reference Manual DOI
NEMO-OCE NEMO Ocean Engine NEMO Ocean Engine DOI
NEMO-ICE NEMO Sea Ice Engine
 DOI
NEMO-TOP-PISCES NEMO Tracers Engine NEMO Tracers engine DOI

Additional capabilities

  • Creation of seemless embedded zooms thanks to the 2-way nesting package AGRIF
  • Input-Output through effective XIOS software
  • Couple to other Earth system components using OASIS
  • Opportunity to integrate an external biogeochemistry model
  • Versatile data interface
  • Utilities provided to {pre,post}process your data

Reference Configurations and Test Cases

Several built-in configurations are provided to evaluate the skills and performances of the model. They can be used for a first easy set-up and as a template for a new configuration. Idealized test cases addressing specific physical processes are also available for download.

Publications

Since 2014 the project has a Special Issue in the open-access journal Geoscientific Model Development (GMD) from the European Geosciences Union (EGU). The main scope is to collect relevant manuscripts covering various topics and to provide a single portal to assess the model potential and evolution.

Consortium Partners

The NEMO Consortium comprises of 5 European institutes (in place since 2008). Together these partners support the sustainable development of NEMO so as to ensure a reliable and evolving framework that meets user's needs.

  • CMCC logo
  • CNRS logo
  • MOI logo
  • Met Office logo
  • NERC logo

Together with the NEMO Working groups, the consortium members define the NEMO long-term development strategy that is implemented by the System Team on a yearly basis in order to regularly release a new versions of the code. The NEMO Working Groups aim to gather community expertise so as to advise development activities.