Abstract
A lateral diffusion scheme designed to efficiently parameterize the subgrid scale lures associated with barotropic and baroclinic transients is presented and tested on a quasi-geostrophic, two layer model, with law-scale thermal forcing. The scheme is based on formal energy conservation and potential enstrophy dissipation. At very coarse resolutions, where the cutoff scale is of the order of the internal radius of deformation, the diffusion scheme is shown to produce a realistic amount of potential-to-kinetic energy conversions, and realistic amplitudes of the large-scale barotropic modes.
