Abstract
Recently, there has been a growing interest in physical-biological ocean-modeling systems by communities in the fields of science and business. In this paper, we present preliminary results from a coupled physical-biological model for the Northwestern Pacific marginal seas. The ocean circulation component is an implementation of the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), and the lower trophic level ecosystem component is a Nutrient-Phytoplankton-Zooplankton-Detritus (NPZD) model. The ROMSNPZD coupled system, with a 25 km resolution, is forced by climatological atmospheric data and predicts the physical variables and concentrations of nitrate, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and detritus. Model results are compared with remote-sensed sea surface temperature and chlorophyll, and with climatological sea surface salinity and nitrate. Our model adequately reproduces the observed spatial distribution and seasonal variability of nitrate and chlorophyll concentrations as well as physical variables, showing a high correlation in the East Sea (ES) and Kuroshio/Oyashio Extension (KOE) region but relatively low correlation in the Yellow Sea (YS) and East China Sea (ECS). Although some deficiencies were found in the biological components, such as the over/underestimation of the intensity of phytoplankton blooms in the ES and KOE/ the YS and ECS, our system demonstrates the capability of the model to capture and record dominant seasonal variability in physical-biological processes and this holds out the promise of coming to a better understanding of such processes and making better predictions .
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