Numerical model of the Baltic Sea circulation

Abstract

The problem of numerical simulation of the Baltic Sea large-scale circulation is considered. The Baltic Sea numerical model is based on the two previous models: the model of ocean dynamics developed at the Institute of Numerical Mathematics of the RAS and the FRESCO model of marine hydroecosystem developed at the Estonian Marine Institute, University of Tartu. The model is based on primitive equations written in spherical ? coordinates with a free surface in the hydrostatic and Boussinesq approximations. The structure of numerical algorithm is described. The algorithm is based on the method of multicomponent splitting and includes splitting by physical processes and spatial coordinates. The equations of sea dynamics are written in a symmetrized form. The problem is split into several energetically balanced subsystems (splitting by physical processes). Each subsystem can be additionally split into subsystems of a simpler structure (splitting by spatial coordinates). The numerical experiment consists in the calculation of the Baltic Sea hydrodynamic fields with the spatial horizontal resolution of ~3.5 km and 25 vertical ?-levels nonuniformly distributed over the depth. The atmospheric forcing is calculated according to the Era-Interim data, the calculation period is 2 years: 2007 and 2008. The results of numerical simulation demonstrate good resemblance to observation data, as well as the results of the Baltic Sea dynamics computation obtained from other models.