Computational Performance Aspects of CROCO-BFM Coupling

Coastal and Regional Ocean Community model (CROCO) is a modeling system used in oceanographic simulations. CROCO solves primitive hydrodynamic equations for momentum, heat and mass transport on a three dimensional, terrain following grid. Several biogeochemical models are already implemented in CROCO, including the PISCES model, which it borrows from NEMO, a different oceanography modeling system. While PISCES is a highly complex model, used in many oceanographic applications, it lacks variable stoichiometry and some plankton functional types needed in certain applications. On the other hand, Biogeochemical Flux Model (BFM) is a dedicated biogeochemistry modeling system, customizable and of user-defined complexity. It can be run as a standalone model or in conjunction with an oceanographic simulation. Previously we have reported on our work regarding the incorporation of BFM into CROCO. In this work we address the performance aspects of this coupling. Namely, compared to e.g. PISCES, BFM is a much more complex model with more tracers, which makes it more computationally expensive. It is therefore of the essence to investigate, and to highlight possible areas of improvement in this coupling’s computational performance.