A three-dimensional shelf sea model has been developed at the IfM over the last 20 years. It serves the institute - not only the research group on shelf sea oceanography - as an important tool in the applications of numerous research projects that receive national or European funding. The latest version of the model was entitled with the acronym HAMSOM (HAMburg Shelf-Ocean Model). The model is presently applied in universities and research laboratories in China, Canada, Australia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, India and Cuba.

During the last years, a new model type was developed by Prof. Jan O. Backhaus and his group. In this new ocean model, defined in z co-ordinates like HAMSOM, an adaptive grid was introduced for the vertical co-ordinate. The static adaptation to a given topography allows for a high, and isotropic vertical resolution at the seabed and in the vicinity of topographic slopes whereas towards the ocean interior resolution is coarsening. The adaptation leads to an unstructured grid, which is organised in a one-dimensional ocean-vector by storing column after column, and by discarding ‘dry’ land cells from the vector. Because of this data structure the model was called Vector-Ocean-Model (VOM).
 An example of such a grid is shown in an animation that crosses the model topography of the Kara Sea in x and y direction.

View the animation in zonal and meridional direction (gif-type, 1 MB).