Integrated ocean acoustics and dynamics modeling with computer clusters

Abstract

Underwater sound propagation in the ocean can be influenced by a variety of physical oceanographic processes, including ocean currents, eddies, internal gravity waves, tides, fronts, instabilities, etc. Our group at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has been developing several numerical simulation frameworks to integrate ocean acoustic and dynamical models and implement them on computer clusters. Most of the current dynamical ocean models run on clusters, and we will review our integration approaches in this talk and also point out the requirement for nesting model domains and interpolations. Different parallelization schemes will be introduced to speed up a variety of acoustic numerical models, for example, ray-tracing, normal modes, couple modes and Parabolic-Equation approximation models. Examples of 3D sound propagation in a number of ocean environments (canyons, slopes, continental shelves and basins) with different dominating ocean processes will be demonstrated. Model performance improvement and limitation will be discussed. [Work sponsored by the ONR.]