Lagrangian model of zooplankton dispersion: numerical schemes comparisons and parameter sensitivity tests

Abstract

This paper presents two comparisons or tests for a Laarangian model of zooplankton dispersion: numerical schemes and time steps. Firstly, we compared three numerical schemes using idealized circulations. Results show that the precisions of the advanced Adams-Bashfold-Moulton (ABM) method and the Runge-Kutta (RK) method were in the same order and both were much higher than that of the Euler method. Furthermore, the advanced ABM method is more efficient than the RK method in computational memory requirements and time consumption. We therefore chose the advanced ABM method as the Lagrangian particle-tracking algorithm. Secondly, we performed a sensitivity test for time steps, using outputs of the hydrodynamic model, Symphonic. Results show that the time step choices depend on the fluid response time that is related to the spatial resolution of velocity fields. The method introduced by Oliveira et al. in 2002 is suitable for choosing time steps of Lagrangian particle-tracking models, at least when only considering advection.