Numerical Modeling of Slopewater Circulation

Abstract

The area between the continental shelf and the Gulf Stream is known as the slopewater region. In the past fifty years several experiments and studies of this region have taken place with the Mid-Atlantic Continental Slope and Rise (MASAR) experiment being one of the most recent. Csanady and Hamilton (1988) compiled all the known information and data from the slopewater region and developed a simple dynamic model of the flow. Based on this model's transport stream function and Stommel's Gulf Stream model, finite centered differencing was used to develop a numerical scheme of slopewater circulation. The model was first developed using Stommel's parameter for circulation within the North Atlantic Gyre. Stommel's model was used as the basis for the new scheme in order to calibrate the model with his exact solution of the stream function for the North Atlantic Gyre. Once verified, Stommel's parameters were replaced by Csanady and Hamilton's values for slopewater. This is a report on the development of a new numerical model. It is also a comparison of the new scheme to both Csanady and Hamilton's model and an observational schematic for the region from the MASAR experiment.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1996
Accession Number
ADA375720

Entities

People

  • Tracey Delk

Organizations

  • United States Naval Academy

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Ground and Sea Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computational Science
  • Continental Slopes
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Differential Equations
  • Equations
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Gulf Stream
  • Labrador Current
  • New York
  • Ocean Currents
  • Oceanography
  • Oceans
  • Sea Water
  • Steady State
  • Transport Ships
  • United States
  • United States Naval Academy

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Coastal Oceanography
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)