A new high-resolution unstructured grid finite volume Arctic Ocean model (AO-FVCOM) : an application for tidal studies

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research
• Main Authors: Chen, Changsheng, Gao, Guoping, Qi, Jianhua, Proshutinsky, Andrey, Beardsley, Robert C., Kowalik, Zygmunt, Lin, Huichan, Cowles, Geoffrey W.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2009
• Subjects: FVCOM; Arctic Ocean tides; Intermodel comparisons; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Greenland; Canadian Archipelago; Siberia; Spitsbergen
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3536

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 114 (2009): C08017, doi:10.1029/2008JC004941. A spherical coordinate version of the unstructured grid 3-D FVCOM (finite volume coastal ocean model) has been applied to the Arctic Ocean to simulate tides with a horizontal resolution ranging from 1 km in the near-coastal areas to 15 km in the deep ocean. By accurately resolving the irregular coastlines and bathymetry in the Arctic Ocean coastal regions, this model reproduces the diurnal (K1 and O1) and semidiurnal (M2 and S2) tidal wave dynamics and captures the complex tidal structure along the coast, particularly in the narrow straits of the Canadian Archipelago. The simulated tidal parameters (harmonic constituents of sea surface elevation and currents) agree well with the available observational data. High-resolution meshes over the continental shelf and slope capture the detailed spatial structure of topographic trapped shelf waves, which are quite energetic along the Greenland, Siberia, and Spitsbergen continental slope and shelf break areas. Water stratification influences the vertical distribution of tidal currents but not the water transport and thus tidal elevation. The comparison with previous finite difference models suggests that horizontal resolution and geometric fitting are two prerequisites to simulate realistically the tidal energy flux in the Arctic Ocean, particularly in the Canadian Archipelago. This research was supported by the NSF Office of Polar Programs through grants OPP ARC-0712903, ARC- 0732084, and ARC-0804029 for C. Chen, G. Gao, and G. Cowles; OPP ARC-0804010 and ARC-0712848 for A. Proshutinsky; OPP ANT-0523223, ARC0712848, NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA17RJ1223 (409) and the WHOI Smith Chair for R. C. Beardsley. J. Qi was supported by the SMAST fishery program under NOAA grants NA04NMF4720332 ...