Numerical Study of the Mediterranean Outflow with a Simplified Topography

• Main Authors: Ramírez, Sergio, Solé, Jordi, García-Olivares, Antonio, Pelegrí, Josep Lluís
• Format: Still Image
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Las Palmas; NADW; North Atlantic Deep Water; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/116739

IV Congress of Marine Sciences, 11-13 June 2014, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.-- 1 page A 3D numerical model is used to setup a simplified scenario on the Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar. This scenario simulates an Atlantic Water (AW) flowing into Mediterranean basin along the surface and a Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW) escaping to the Atlantic near the sea bottom. The MOW has two different main paths: northwards, along the Iberian slope, reaching as far as the Scandinavian Peninsula, thereby influencing the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW), and southwestwards, propagating into the Atlantic Ocean. In this simplified scenario we want to study the way a gravity current, like the MOW, behaves for different outflow conditions. The emphasis is on understanding how distinct outflow conditions lead to different propagating depths and mixing that may affect NADW formation under predicted global change future scenarios. The numerical model used is Regional Ocean Model System, ROMS, http://www.myroms.org/). ROMS is a free surface, terrain-following, primitive equations ocean model widely used by the scientific community for a diverse range of applications. The model domain is centered in the area of Gulf of Cadis with the northern and southern boundaries delimitated by the Iberian Peninsula and the Moroccan coast, the eastern boundary is at 6ºW, near to Camarinal Sill, and the western boundary is open, reaching as far as Cape San Vicente. The imposed boundary conditions consist in two layers of different density, the upper one simulating the AW and the lower simulating the MOW. The grid has 96 X 64 grid points with a resolution of about 3 km and 36 sigma levels. The complex topography of the area is simplified through a slope with two different zonal dependences: the initial (1/3 of the domain) decay of the bathymetry at the east is adjusted by a hyperbolic tangent function, followed by a constant slope. Initial conditions are setup as follows. The western part of the basin is filled with AW, and the ...