Characterization and Modeling of Archipelago Strait Dynamics

Abstract

The goal of this project is to meet future Navy environmental forecasting requirements through a better understanding of the importance of atmospheric forcing mechanisms on the ocean and scales to numerical model resolution in coastal and other complex geometry regions. The objectives of this project are to evaluate high-resolution atmospheric numerical modeling skill through real-time forecast support of research cruise operations and ocean modeling experiments over the Philippine archipelago, and to investigate the sensitivity of atmospheric and ocean model forecasts to horizontal model resolution in the straits and coastal regions of this complex archipelago, using both one-way and two-way coupling between the ocean and atmosphere. Accurate ocean prediction in coastal regions, such as the Philippine archipelago, depends on atmospheric forcing with sufficient resolution to represent complex flow through the straits, around islands, and in coastal boundary regions. Our approach is to use the existing atmospheric and ocean data assimilation and modeling infrastructure of the Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) to provide high-resolution atmospheric fields to support ocean modeling research over the Philippine archipelago. COAMPS and COAMPS-OS are registered trademarks of the Naval Research Laboratory. COAMPS has four major components: the NRL Atmospheric Variational Data Assimilation System (NAVDAS) for atmospheric analyses; the NRL Coupled Ocean Data Assimilation System (NCODA) system for ocean analyses; the NRL nested, non-hydrostatic atmospheric model; and the NRL Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM). Two-way atmosphere-ocean coupling is available using the Earth Systems Modeling Framework (ESMF) to provide communication between the atmosphere (COAMPS) and ocean (NCOM).

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2009
Accession Number
ADA526978

Entities

People

  • James D. Doyle

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Ground and Sea Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Archipelagoes
  • Assimilation
  • Boundary Layer
  • Coastal Regions
  • Computer Science
  • Data Analysis
  • Dynamics
  • Electronic Mail
  • High Resolution
  • Islands
  • Military Research
  • Navy
  • Oceans
  • Sea Level
  • Simulations
  • Underwater Acoustics
  • Wind Stress

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers