Simulation of tidal hydrodynamics in the Red Sea using COHERENS model

Abstract

The present study investigates the validity of the COHERENS model, to simulate the tidal elevations in the Red Sea and the western Gulf of Aden during 2013. The model is a barotropic solver, forced by major tidal constituents at the open boundary. The results are validated with the observation at the chosen locations by comparing the amplitude and phase of the tidal constituents. Even though there are some differences between the observed and the modeled values, they are in a reasonable acceptable range. At Berbera, Jazan, Jeddah and Duba; the differences in amplitude of M2 constituent are 0.0245, 0.0138, 0.0081 and 0.0225 m respectively. The correlation coefficients between the observed and modeled tidal elevations are above 0.9 at all stations. The complex differences for M2, S2, K1 and O1 are found to be very less. The tidal current is 0.06 m/s at Duba, 0.04 m/s at Jeddah and the highest speed of 0.5 m/s occurred near Bab el-Mandeb. The tidal current ellipses of M2 and S2 constituents in southern Red Sea were plotted. Results indicate that the surface tidal currents reduce in magnitude in deeper region and increase towards the continental shelf, although the semidiurnal components are expanded more at mid-shelf sites than the diurnal component.