Model of Estuaries and Coastal Oceans (MECO) is a a three dimensional, non-linear, variable density, hydrodynamic model. It is intended to be a general purpose hydrodynamic model for estuaries and coastal oceans providing distributions of velocity, temperature and salinity as well as concentrations of passive tracers given input fluxes of water, passive tracers and forcing by winds, atmospheric pressure gradients, tides and surface heat fluxes. The equations forming the basis of the model are similar to those described in Blumberg and Herring (1987), except that the model uses z-coordinates, rather than sigma coordinates in the vertical. MECO is written in the C language, and uses the netCDF data format for input and output files. The MECO model has evolved into the Sparse Hydrodynamic Ocean Code (SHOC). SHOC has been in use since 2003 and is the hydrodynamic model used by the Coastal Environmental Modelling Team (CEM). Information regarding SHOC can be found at the CEM website. (please see link below)