Model resolution
From Glossary of Meteorology
model resolution
The smallest spatial or temporal scale at which a physical process can be explicitly represented by a numerical model.
In gridpoint numerical modeling, the spatial resolution is at least 4 times the grid length because the smallest waves are removed by a dissipation scheme to prevent numerical instability. Kinetic energy spectra can be used to define the "effective" resolution of a numerical model, which is the scale at which kinetic energy begins to decrease rapidly due to dissipation. In mesoscale numerical models, the effective resolution is generally about 7 times the grid length.
Grasso, L. D., 2000: The differentiation between grid spacing and resolution and their application to numerical modeling. modeling. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 81, 579–580, https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477(2000)081%3C0579:CAA%3E2.3.CO;2.
Term edited 24 August 2023.
