Improvements for the Western North Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico ADCIRC Tidal Database (EC2015)

Christine Szpilka,Kendra Dresback,Jindong Wang,Jesse Feyen,Randall Kolar

doi:10.3390/jmse4040072

Abstract

This research details the development and validation of an updated constituent tidal database for the Western North Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico (WNAT) region, referred to as the EC2015 database. Regional databases, such as EC2015, provide much higher resolution than global databases allowing users to more accurately define the tidal forcing on smaller sub-region domains. The database last underwent major updates in 2001 and was developed using the two-dimensional, depth-integrated form of the coastal hydrodynamic model, ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC), which solves the shallow-water equations in the generalized wave continuity equation form. Six main areas of improvement are examined: (1) placement of the open ocean boundary; (2) higher coastal resolution using Vertical Datum (VDatum) models; (3) updated bathymetry from global databases; (4) updated boundary forcing compared using two global tidal databases; (5) updated bottom friction formulations; and (6) improved model physics by incorporating the advective terms in ADCIRC. The skill of the improved database is compared to that of its predecessor and is calculated using harmonic data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (NOAA CO-OPS) stations and historic International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) data. Overall, the EC2015 database significantly reduces errors realized in the EC2001 database and improves the quality of coastal tidal constituents available for smaller sub-regional models in the Western North Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico (WNAT) region.

Highlights

Some of the model improvements are examined independently to determine how effective they are at increasing the tidal constituent accuracy
As described in Section 2.3.2, will be provided in Section 3.2 when the EC2001 model is compared to the final release EC2015 model
The largest difference was in the M2 constituent, which exhibited 0.3 cm reductions of error when the advective terms were included in the simulation, and the largest regional change was for the Atlantic stations

Summary

Introduction

Small-scale regional hydrodynamic models are widely used to study many varied physical processes such as sediment transport [1,2,3]; storm surge inundation [4,5,6]; real-time surge forecast systems [7,8,9,10]; sea level rise [11,12,13,14]; passive fish and larval transport, as well as coupled ecological behavior [15,16,17]; combined hydrologic and hydrodynamic processes [9,18]; passive transport of oil spills [19] and coupled hydrodynamic-marsh interactions with biological feedback [20] Each of these complex applications requires reliable tidal boundary forcing in order to provide accurate results. These regional databases use the finite element ADvanced CIRCulation model (ADCIRC) forced with a global tidal database at the open ocean boundary to develop the tidal profile within the domain

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion