Twenty-eight years of hydrodynamic variability in the Bay of Quinte (ice-free periods of 1979–2006)

Abstract

Abstract A three-dimensional finite volume numerical model was implemented for the Bay of Quinte, an embayment on the northern side of Lake Ontario, Canada, for the years 1979–2006 to illustrate the seasonal evolution of the bay's circulation and water properties at fine spatial resolutions. The three-dimensional hydrodynamics was simulated for the average ice-free period of April 14 to December 7 of each year and the model was forced using meteorological data from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) dataset. Model results were validated against observed temperature profiles from 1980, 2003, and 2004; bi-weekly summer surface temperatures from 1979 to 2006; and observed flow structures near Glenora in 1976 and 1978. Replacing the NARR meteorological data with local observations lead to an improved temperature estimation for 2004. The water in the bay was found to be warming at a rate of 0.02 ± 0.01 °C/yr. The number of times per year the main channel of the bay can flush is about 4 times per year and can increase up to 20 times per year at the head. These values are generally regulated by the accumulative river inflows and are not only interannually and seasonally variable but also are spatially variable across the bay. The number of times the bay would flush per year was parameterized as a function of mean annual river discharge, showing that in the absence of wind, a minimum annual Trent river (the largest river in the bay) discharge of 64 m 3 /s is required to flush out the head of the bay at least once a year.