Abstract
The North Sea is a shallow sea that forms a complex physical system. The nonlinear interaction of the astronomical tides, varying wind fields and varying pressure systems requires appropriate approaches to be described accurately. An application based on the advanced numerical model Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) was newly developed by the authors, tailored to simulate these hydrodynamic processes in the North Sea and the Belgian Continental Shelf, which is the area of particular interest in the present study. The purpose of this work is to develop and validate a state-of-the-art three-dimensional numerical model to form the basis of a compound operational and forecasting tool for the Belgian coastal zone. The model was validated with respect to water levels and temperature. Validation for astronomical tides was accomplished through the comparison of the principal constituents between the model results and observations at a number of tidal gauges in Belgium and other countries. A statistical analysis of the results showed that the model behaves as expected throughout the North Sea. The model response to the varying meteorological conditions was also validated using hindcast data for 2011 as input. In this case, the comparison between observed and modelled water levels showed a good agreement with average RMSE in Belgium 9.5 cm. Overall, the added value of this work is the development of an independent model for validation and comparison with other models and which can be used as an efficient tool for operational and forecasting purposes.
Highlights
The North Sea spans an area of more than 970 km in latitude and 580 km in longitude and is surrounded by eight highly developed industrial countries
Large databases with reference to the three-dimensional (3D) and temporal distribution of oceanographic and meteorological observations are maintained over the decades by major data centers for the North Sea, e.g., the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), the German Oceanographic Data Centre (DOD), the Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine (SHOM), the Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science (PANGAEA), etc
The meteorological conditions over the Belgian Continental Shelf (BCS) are highly correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) [33] performed a simple assessment of the relative importance of the forcing from wind stresses and atmospheric pressure gradients. In their analysis they neglected the variations of water depth and the possibility of surges generated by atmospheric pressure gradients in deep water, which may propagate into the shallow sea
Summary
The North Sea spans an area of more than 970 km in latitude and 580 km in longitude and is surrounded by eight highly developed industrial countries. We tailored the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) to simulate hydrodynamics due to astronomical tides and meteorological conditions in the North Sea and, in the Belgian Continental Shelf (BCS). The meteorological conditions over the Belgian Continental Shelf (BCS) are highly correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) [33] performed a simple assessment of the relative importance of the forcing from wind stresses and atmospheric pressure gradients. In their analysis they neglected the variations of water depth and the possibility of surges generated by atmospheric pressure gradients in deep water, which may propagate into the shallow sea. The algorithms that comprise the ROMS computational kernel are described in detail in [41,44,45]
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