THE SURFACE OF AN AQUAPLANET GCM

This article describes some of the challenges and culprits of working with a mixed layer ocean and trying to arrive at an acceptable climatology with a minimum number of parameters. We discuss why even the simplest version of the Model of an idealized Moist Atmosphere MiMA [Jucker and Gerber (2017)] includes meridional heat flux ("Q-flux"), a meridionally inhomogeneous mixed layer depth, options to reduce the mixed layer depth locally ("land"), as well as options to change surface albedo