Development of an unstructured-grid wave-current coupled model and its application

Abstract

An unstructured grid wave-current coupled model was developed by coupling the SWAN (Simulating Waves Nearshore) wave model and ADCIRC (Advanced Circulation model) ocean model through the Model Coupling Toolkit (MCT). The developed coupled model has high spatial resolution in the coastal area and is efficient for computation. The efficiency of the newly developed SWAN+ADCIRC model was compared with that of the widely-used SWAN+ADCIRC coupled model, in which SWAN and ADCIRC are coupled directly rather than through the MCT. Results show that the directly-coupled model is more efficient when the total number of computational cores is small, but the MCT-coupled model begin to run faster than the directly-coupled model when more computational cores are used. The MCT-coupled model maintains the scalability longer and can increase the simulation efficiency more than 35% by comparing the minimum wall clock time of one day simulation in the test runs.The MCT-coupled SWAN+ADCIRC model was used to simulate the storm surge and waves during the typhoon Usagi which formed in the western Pacific on September 17, 2013 and landed at Shanwei, China. Three numerical experiments were performed to investigate the effect of wave-current interaction on the storm surge and waves. The results show that the coupled model can better simulate the storm surge and waves when considering the wave-induced radiation stress, the wave effect on the wind stress drag coefficient and the modulation of current and water level on waves. During the typhoon Usagi, the effect of wave radiation stress could result in a maximum of 0.75m increase in the extreme storm surge, and the wave induced wind stress could cause a −0.82∼0.48m change of the extreme storm surge near the coastal area. Besides, the radiation stress forced currents cannot be ignored either in the study of mass transport at coastal zones. Results of this study are useful for understanding the wave-current interaction processes and the development of the operational prediction technique for storm surge and waves.