Oceananigans.jl

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Oceananigans.jl

🌊 Fast and friendly ocean-flavored Julia software for simulating incompressible fluid dynamics in Cartesian and spherical shell domains on CPUs and GPUs.

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Oceananigans

Oceananigans is a fast, friendly, flexible software package for finite volume simulations of the nonhydrostatic and hydrostatic Boussinesq equations on CPUs and GPUs. It runs on GPUs (wow, fast!), though we believe Oceananigans makes the biggest waves with its ultra-flexible user interface that makes simple simulations easy, and complex, creative simulations possible. Oceananigans development is community-driven with contributors from academia and industry - see jobs discussions for developer and user opportunities! Testing infrastructure is provided by atdepth and the Climate Modeling Alliance.

Quick install ​

Oceananigans is a registered Julia package. So to install it,

  1. Download Julia.

  2. Launch Julia and type

julia
julia> using Pkg

julia> Pkg.add("Oceananigans")

Julia 1.10 or later is required

Oceananigans requires Julia 1.10 or later.

Tested Julia versions

Oceananigans is currently tested on Julia 1.12.

If you're new to Julia and its wonderful Pkg manager, the Oceananigans wiki provides more detailed installation instructions.

The Oceananigans "knowledge base" ​

It's deep and includes:

Getting in touch ​

Whether you need help getting started with Oceananigans, found a bug, want Oceananigans to be more awesome, or just want to chat about computational oceanography, you've got a few options for getting in touch:

  • Start a discussion. This is great for general questions about numerics, science, experimental or under-documented features, and for getting help setting up a neat new numerical experiment.

  • Open an issue. Issues are best if you think the Oceananigans source code needs attention: a bug, a sign error (đŸ˜±), an important missing feature, or a typo in this documentation 👀.

  • Join the NumericalEarth slack because we love to chat.

Citing and otherwise spreading the word ​

If you use Oceananigans for your research, teaching, or fun đŸ€©, everyone in our community will be grateful if you credit Oceananigans by name.

The community has published a number of articles describing the development of Oceananigans, including a recent preprint submitted to the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems that presents an overview of all the things that make Oceananigans unique:

"High-level, high-resolution ocean modeling at all scales with Oceananigans"

by Gregory L. Wagner, Simone Silvestri, Navid C. Constantinou, Ali Ramadhan, Jean-Michel Campin, Chris Hill, Tomas Chor, Jago Strong-Wright, Xin Kai Lee, Francis Poulin, Andre Souza, Keaton J. Burns, Siddhartha Bishnu, John Marshall, and Raffaele Ferrari

submitted to the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, arXiv:2502.14148

Please cite this 👆 overview paper if you use Oceananigans in published work.

We've also submitted a number of model development papers. Please cite these if you use the features they describe! Also, if you have developed a new feature in Oceananigans and describe it in a paper, make sure to open a pull request to add it to this list:

Papers and preprints using Oceananigans ​

If you have work using Oceananigans that you would like to have listed here, please open a pull request to add it or let us know!

  1. De Abreu, S. and Timmermans, M. (2026). Mixed-layer deepening and internal wave generation under sea ice in free drift, Journal of Physical Oceanography, in press. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-25-0165.1

  2. Markmann, ΀., Straat, Μ., Peitz, S., Hammer, B. (2026). Fourier neural operators as data-driven surrogates for two- and three-dimensional Rayleigh–bĂ©nard convection, Neurocomputing, 133201. DOI: 10.1016/j.neucom.2026.133201

  3. Yakushev, E., Berezina, A., Yakubov, S., Novikov, M., Ghaffari, P., Dzhurova, B., Hristova, O., Vogt, R., and Ranneklev, S. (2026). Model-based analysis of seasonal hypoxia: The Varna Lake–Bay case study, Ecological Modelling, 515, 111535. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2026.111535

  4. Gupta, M., Thompon, A. F., and Klein P. (2026). Energetics of the upper‐ocean under sea ice: Frictional dissipation versus baroclinic production, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 131(2), e2025JC023026. DOI: 10.1029/2025JC023026

  5. Sjur, A. L. P., Isachsen, P. E., Nilsson, J., and Allen, S. (2026). Nonlinear dynamics of time-variable slope circulation, EGUsphere preprint. DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-2026-778

  6. Pan, W. and Li, Q. (2026). Transient response of Langmuir turbulence to abrupt onset of surface heating, Physical Review Fluids, 11, 024606. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-25-0077.1

  7. Li, Q. (2026). Large eddy simulations of stabilizing effects induced by opposing Eulerian shear and Stokes drift shear in an idealized ocean surface boundary layer, Journal of Physical Oceanography, e250077, in press. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-25-0077.1

  8. Peng. S., Silvestri, S., and Bodner A (2026). Submesoscale and boundary layer turbulence under mesoscale forcing in the upper ocean, arXiv preprint, arXiv:2601.10441. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2601.10441

  9. Wang, S., Kang, W., Zhang, Y., & Marshall, J. (2026). Evolution of a point plume in a rotating unstratified fluid overlain by a stratified layer: scaling and implications for icy satellites, ESS Open Archive. DOI: 10.22541/essoar.176824050.01249257/v1

  10. Wei, Z., Li, Q., & Chen, B. (2026). A direct assessment of Langmuir turbulence parameterizations in idealized coastal merging boundary layers, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 18, e2025MS004993. DOI:10.1029/2025MS004993

  11. Johnston, D. R., Shakespeare, C. J., and Constantinou, N. C. (2026) Evaluating and improving wave and non-wave stress parametrisations for oceanic flows, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 56(3), 643–664. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-25-0064.1

  12. Allende, S., Couston, L.-A., Thalabard, S., and Favier, B. (2026) Melting dynamics and mixing layer growth near the ice-ocean interface, arXiv preprint, arXiv:2601.18674. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2601.18674

  13. Zheng, Z., Wenegrat, J. O., Fox-Kemper, B., and Brett, G. J. (2025). Wind-catalyzed energy exchanges between fronts and boundary layer turbulence, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 55(9), 1591–1606. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-24-0243.1

  14. Zhang, Y., Bire, S., Wang, S., Nath, A., Ramadhan, A., Kang, W., and Marshall, J. (2025). Long transit time from the seafloor to the ice shell on Enceladus, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 541(2), 859–871. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf1008

  15. Chor, T., Wenegrat, J., and Wagner, G. L. (2025) Turbulent mixing and dissipation around rough seamounts, ESS Open Archive. DOI: 10.22541/essoar.176659936.64523492/v1

  16. Lee, X. K., Ramadhan, A., Souza, A., Wagner, G. L., Silvestri, S., Marshall, J. and Ferrari, R. (2025) NORi: An ML-augmented ocean boundary layer parameterization, arXiv preprint, arXiv:2512.04452. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2512.04452

  17. Brenner, S., Thompson, A., and Gupta, M. (2025) Patterns of sea ice floes shape ocean turbulence in the marginal ice zone, preprint (Version 1), available at Research Square. DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8099873/v1

  18. Moses, W. S., Cheng, G., Churavy, V., Gelbrecht, M., Klöwer, M., Kump, J., Morlighem, M., Williamson, S., Apte, D., Berg, P., Giordano, M., Hill, C., Loose, N., Montoison, A., Narayanan, S. H. K., Pal, A., Schanen, M., Silvestri, S., Wagner, G. L., Heimbach, P. (2025) DJ4Earth: Differentiable, and performance-portable Earth System Modeling via program transformations, ESS Open Archive. DOI: 10.22541/essoar.176314951.18114616/v1

  19. Peng, S., Silvestri, S., and Bodner, A. (2025) Capturing multiscale dynamics in the oceanic mixed layer. Part I: Hydrostatic simulations, Authorea. DOI: 10.22541/au.174585712.26266872/v1

  20. Liu, F. and Zemskova, V. E. (2025) Nondimensional parameter regimes of Arctic ice keel-ocean flow interactions, Earth arXiv preprint. DOI: 10.31223/X51N08.

  21. Zhang, Y., Kang, W., and Marshall, J. (2025) How does ice shell geometry shape ocean dynamics on icy moons?, arXiv preprint, arXiv:2510.25988. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2510.25988

  22. Shikanian, A. and Parfenyev, V. (2025) The effects of no-slip boundaries and external force torque on two-dimensional turbulence in a square domain, arXiv preprint, arXiv:2508.13590. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2508.13590

  23. Souza, A. N., Silvestri, S., Deck, K., Bischoff, T., Ferrari, R., and Flierl, G. R. (2025) Surface to seafloor: A generative AI framework for decoding the ocean interior state, arXiv preprint, arXiv:2504.15308. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2503.12845

  24. Vankevich, R. Y., Rodionov, А. А., Shpilev, N. N., and Chebotkova, V. V. (2025) Modeling the origin and evolution of convective vortex structures on a slope. Numerical experiment, Fundamental and Applied Hydrophysics, 18(4), 20-27. (in Russian) DOI: 10.59887/2073-6673.2025.18(4)-2

  25. Vankevich, R. E., Isaev, A. V., and Ryabchenko, V. A. (2025) On approaches to improving the description of North Sea water inflows in the general circulation models of the Baltic Sea, Fundamental and Applied Hydrophysics, 18(3), 37-52. (in Russian) DOI: 10.59887/2073-6673.2025.18(3)-3

  26. Bhadouriya, A., Gayen, B., Naveira Garabato, A., and Silvano, A. (2025) Overshooting convection drives winter mixed layer under Antarctic sea ice, preprint (Version 1), available at Research Square. DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-5932119/v1

  27. Wagner, G. L. and Constantinou, N. C. (2025) Phenomenology of decaying turbulence beneath surface waves, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 1020, A51. DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2025.10649

  28. de la Calle, E. and García, C. (2025) Evaluation of Juliana Tool: A translator for Julia’s CUDA.jl code into KernelAbstraction.jl, Future Generation Computer Systems, 171, 107813. DOI: 10.1016/j.future.2025.107813

  29. Wang S., Kang W., Zhang Y., and Marshall J. (2025) The fate of rotating point plumes in an unstratified environment: from free growth to boundary interactions, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 1018, A19. DOI:10.1017/jfm.2025.10533

  30. Bisits, J. I., Zika, J. D., and Sohail, T. (2025) Cabbeling as a catalyst and driver of turbulent mixing, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 1011, A17. DOI:10.1017/jfm.2025.349

  31. Whitley, V. and Wenegrat, J. O. (2025) Breaking internal waves on sloping topography: connecting parcel displacements to overturn size, interior-boundary exchanges, and mixing, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 55(6), 645-661. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-24-0052.1

  32. Chor, T. and Wenegrat, J. (2025). The turbulent dynamics of anticyclonic submesoscale headland wakes, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 55(6), 737–759. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-24-0139.1

  33. Silvestri, S., Wagner, G. L., Constantinou, N. C., Hill, C., Campin, J.-M., Souza, A., Bishnu, S., Churavy, V., Marshall, J., and Ferrari, R. (2025) A GPU-based ocean dynamical core for routine mesoscale-resolving climate simulations, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 16(7), e2024MS004465. DOI: 10.1029/2024MS004465

  34. Wagner, G. L., Hillier, A., Constantinou, N. C., Silvestri, S., Souza, A., Burns, K., Hill, C., Campin, J.-M., Marshall, J., and Ferrari, R. (2025). Formulation and calibration of CATKE, a one-equation parameterization for microscale ocean mixing, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 16(7), e2024MS004522. DOI: 10.1029/2024MS004522

  35. Allred, T., Li, X., Wiersdorf, A., Greenman, B., and Gopalakrishnan, G. (2025). FlowFPX: Nimble tools for debugging floating-point exceptions, The Proceedings of the JuliaCon Conferences, 7(67), 148. DOI: 10.21105/jcon.00148

  36. Atkinson, E., McWilliams, J., and Grisouard, N. (2025) Near-inertial echoes of ageostrophic instability in submesoscale filaments, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 1015, A17. DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2025.10348

  37. Middleton, L., Wu, W., Johnston, T. M. S., Tarry, D. R., Farrar, J. T., Poulain, P., Özgökmen, T., Shcherbina, A. Y., Pascual, A., McNeill, C. L., Belgacem, M., Berta, M., Abbott, K., Worden, A., Wittmers, F., Kinsella, A., Centurioni, L. R., Hormann, V., Cutolo, E., TintorĂ©, J., Ruiz, S., Casas, B., Cheslack, H. R., D'Asaro, E., and Mahadevan, A. (2025) Observations of a splitting ocean cyclone resulting in subduction of surface waters, Science Advances, 11, eadu3221. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adu3221

  38. PruĆŸina, P., Zhou, Q., Middleton, L., and Taylor, J. R. (2025) Layer formation in double-diffusive convection diagnosed in sorted buoyancy coordinates, Journal of Fluid Mechanics. DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2025.258

  39. PruĆŸina, P. (2025) A one-dimensional model of staircase formation in diffusive convection, Journal of Fluid Mechanics. DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2025.141

  40. Lee, A., Hutchings, J., Horvat, C., Tavri, A., and Pearson, B. (2025) Impact of Surface Waves on Mixing and Circulation in a Summertime Lead, EGUsphere preprint. DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-2025-4239

  41. Fromme, F., Harder, H., Allen-Blanchette, C., and Peitz, S. (2025) Surrogate Modeling of 3D Rayleigh-BĂ©nard Convection with Equivariant Autoencoders, arXiv preprint, arXiv:2505.13569. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2505.13569

  42. Fan, X., Fox-Kemper, B., Suzuki, N., Li, Q., Marchesiello, P., Sullivan, P. P., and Hall, P. S. (2024) Comparison of the Coastal and Regional Ocean COmmunity model (CROCO) and NCAR-LES in non-hydrostatic simulations, Geoscientific Model Development, 17, 4095-4113. DOI: 10.5194/gmd-17-4095-2024

  43. Abbott, K. and Mahadevan, A. (2024). Why is the monsoon coastal upwelling signal subdued in the Bay of Bengal?, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 129, e2024JC022023. DOI: 10.1029/2024JC022023

  44. Bisits, J. I., Zika, J. D., and Evans, D. G. (2024) Does cabbeling shape the thermohaline structure of high-latitude oceans?, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 54(12), 2419–2430. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-24-0061.1

  45. Strong-Wright, J. and Taylor, J. R. (2024) A model of tidal flow and tracer release in a giant kelp forest, Flow, 4, E21. DOI: 10.1017/flo.2024.13

  46. Silvestri, S., Wagner, G. L., Campin, J.-M., Constantinou, N. C., Hill, C., Souza, A., and Ferrari, R. (2024). A new WENO-based momentum advection scheme for simulations of ocean mesoscale turbulence, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 16(7), e2023MS004130. DOI: 10.1029/2023MS004130

  47. Chen S., Strong-Wright J., and Taylor, J. R. (2024) Modeling carbon dioxide removal via sinking of particulate organic carbon from macroalgae cultivation, Frontiers in Marine Science, 11, 1359614. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1359614

  48. Gupta, M., GĂŒrcan, E., and Thompson, A. F. (2024). Eddy-induced dispersion of sea ice floes at the marginal ice zone, Geophysical Research Letters, 51, e2023GL105656. DOI: 10.1029/2023GL105656

  49. Zhang, Y., Kang, W., and Marshall, J. (2024) Ocean weather systems on icy moons, with application to Enceladus, Science Advances, 10, eadn6857. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn6857

  50. Wagner, G. L., Pizzo, N. E., Lenain, L., and Veron, F. (2023) Transition to turbulence in wind-drift layers, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 976, A8. DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2023.920

  51. Jiménez-Urias, M. A. and Haine, T. W. N. (2023) On the non-self-adjoint and multiscale character of passive scalar mixing under laminar advection, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 973, A44. DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2023.748

  52. Strong-Wright, J., Chen, S., Constantinou, N. C., Silvestri, S., Wagner, G. L., and Taylor, J. R. (2023). OceanBioME.jl: A flexible environment for modelling the coupled interactions between ocean biogeochemistry and physics, Journal of Open Source Software, 90(8), 5669. DOI: 10.21105/joss.05669

  53. Bire, S., Mittal, T., Kang, W., Ramadhan, A., Tuckman, P., German, C. R., Thurnherr, A., and Marshall, J. (2023) Divergent behavior of hydrothermal plumes in fresh versus salty icy ocean worlds, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 128, e2023JE007740. DOI: 10.1029/2023JE007740

  54. Ramadhan, A., Marshall, J. C., Souza, A. N., Lee, X. K., Piterbarg, U., Hillier, A., Wagner, G. L., Rackauckas, C., Hill, C., Campin, J.-M., and Ferrari, R. (2022). Capturing missing physics in climate model parameterizations using neural differential equations, ESS Open Archive. DOI: 10.1002/essoar.10512533.1

  55. Gupta, M. and Thompson, A. F. (2022). Regimes of sea-ice floe melt: Ice-ocean coupling at the submesoscales, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 127, e2022JC018894. DOI: 10.1029/2022JC018894

  56. Simoes-Sousa, I. T., Tandon, A., Pereira, F., Lazaneo, C. Z., and Mahadevan, A. (2022). Mixed layer eddies supply nutrients to enhance the spring phytoplankton bloom, Frontiers in Marine Sciences, 9, 825027. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2022.825027

  57. Chor, T., Wenegrat, J. O., and Taylor, J. (2022). Insights into the mixing efficiency of submesoscale Centrifugal-Symmetric instabilities., Journal of Physical Oceanography, 52(10), 2273-2287. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-21-0259.1

  58. Bire, S., Kang, W., Ramadhan, A., Campin, J.-M., and Marshall, J. (2022). Exploring ocean circulation on icy moons heated from below., Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 127, e2021JE007025. DOI: 10.1029/2021JE007025

  59. Rackauckas, C., Ma, Y., Martensen, J., Warner, C., Zubov, K., Supekar, R., Skinner, D., Ramadhan, A., and Edelman, A. (2021) Universal differential equations for scientific machine learning, arXiv, arXiv.2001.04385. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2001.04385

  60. Coakley, S., Miles, T. N., Glenn, S., and Lim, H. S. (2021). Observation-Large eddy simulation comparison of ocean mixing under Typhoon Soulik (2018), OCEANS 2021: San Diego – Porto, 2021, pp. 1-7. DOI: 10.23919/OCEANS44145.2021.9705670

  61. Arnscheidt, C. W., Marshall, J., Dutrieux, P., Rye, C. D., and Ramadhan, A. (2021). On the settling depth of meltwater escaping from beneath Antarctic ice shelves, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 51(7), 2257–2270. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-20-0178.1

  62. Wagner, G. L., Chini, G. P., Ramadhan, A., Gallet, B., and Ferrari, R. (2021). Near-inertial waves and turbulence driven by the growth of swell, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 51(5), 1337-1351. DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-20-0178.1

  63. Buffett, B. A. (2021). Conditions for turbulent Ekman layers in precessionally driven flow, Geophysical Journal International, 226(1), 56–65. DOI: 10.1093/gji/ggab088

  64. Bhamidipati, N., Souza, A. N., and Flierl, G. R. (2020). Turbulent mixing of a passive scalar in the ocean mixed layer, Ocean Modelling, 149, 101615. DOI: 10.1016/j.ocemod.2020.101615

  65. Souza, A. N., Wagner, G. L., Ramadhan, A., Allen, B., Churavy, V., Schloss, J., Campin, J. M., Hill, C., Edelman, A., Marshall, J., Flierl, G., and Ferrari, R. (2020). Uncertainty quantification of ocean parameterizations: Application to the K‐Profile‐Parameterization for penetrative convection, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 12, e2020MS002108. DOI: 10.1029/2020MS002108