SLIM: A model for the land-sea continuum and beyond

The Second-generation Louvain-la-Neuve Ice-ocean Model (SLIM, www.climate.be/slim_flyer) deals with the equations governing sea-ice, geophysical, environmental and groundwater phenomena by means of the (discontinuous Galerkin) finite element method on 1D, 2D or 3D unstructured meshes. To take advantage of state-of-the-art developments, SLIM is also being interfaced with existing tools (often based on radically different numerical methods), such as the well-known and widely used General Ocean Turbulence Model (www.gotm.net, GOTM). The post-processing of the results is achieved with the help of usual statistical and computer graphics methods. Other techniques are also resorted to, such as tracer and timescale methods derived from CART (Constituent-oriented Age and Residence time Theory, www.climate.be/cart) or network science tools (sites.uclouvain.be/networks) (Thomas et al. 2014).The hydrodynamics simulated by the aforementioned finite element model can be introduced into a number of SLIM-based environmental modules, which are capable of representing sediment transport (Delandmeter et al. 2015), as well as the fate of some classes of contaminants, namely microbiological pollutants (de Brauwere et al. 2014), endocrine disrupting compounds, heavy metals (Elskens et al. 2014) or radionuclides. A simple ecological model is being developed, whose aim is to simulate the evolution of various species of phyto- and zoo-plankton (Naithani et al. 2016).