A process-oriented modelling study of the coastal Canary and Iberian Current system
Author
Batteen, Mary L.
Martinho, Antonio S.
Miller, Henry A.
McClean, Julie L.
Date
2007Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In a hierarchy of increasing complexity of physical forcing mechanisms, we conduct a process-oriented study of the
Northern Canary Current System (NCCS) with a terrain-following numerical ocean model (in this case the Princeton
Ocean Model, POM) to investigate the forcing mechanisms for the classical as well as unique features of the NCCS. While
most of the NCCS features are realistically simulated, a key comparison of the results shows that unexpectedly a realistic
subsurface mesoscale feature is simulated in a flat bottom NCCS model but not in the same model with bottom topography.
We then show that this is a consequence of a numerical choice, which leads to the use of an improved technique to
smooth the bottom topography, which better preserves the raw topography and subsequently is shown to produce the subsurface
feature. This choice is then used in the final and most realistic of the NCCS experiments, in which a high temporal
resolution study is conducted from March to September 1996 for the NCCS coastal ocean domain using daily winds and
thermohaline forcing initialized on 2 March 1996 from a one-way coupled North Atlantic Parallel Ocean Program (POP)
model updated at the lateral boundaries of the POM model every three days. A key physical result is that a dynamic flow
consistent with the Azores Current is produced in this experiment, a feature not produced in the other experiments which
used climatological data at the open boundaries. The results of these process-oriented experiments emphasize that numerical
models of ocean circulation require important choices, which are both numerical and physical.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
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