Improving Surface Tidal Accuracy Through Two-Way Nesting in a Global Ocean T Model ⁎ Chan-Hoo Jeona, , Maarten C
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Ocean Modelling 137 (2019) 98–113 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ocean Modelling journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ocemod Improving surface tidal accuracy through two-way nesting in a global ocean T model ⁎ Chan-Hoo Jeona, , Maarten C. Buijsmana, Alan J. Wallcraftb, Jay F. Shriverc, Brian K. Arbicd, James G. Richmanb, Patrick J. Hoganc a Division of Marine Science, The University of Southern Mississippi, Stennis Space Center, MS, USA b Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA c Oceanography Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Code 7323, Stennis Space Center, MS, USA d Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: In global ocean simulations, forward (non-data-assimilative) tide models generally feature large sea-surface- Two-way nesting height errors near Hudson Strait in the North Atlantic Ocean with respect to altimetry-constrained tidal solu- HYCOM tions. These errors may be associated with tidal resonances that are not well resolved by the complex coastal- Barotropic tides shelf bathymetry in low-resolution simulations. An online two-way nesting framework has been implemented to OASIS3-MCT improve global surface tides in the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM). In this framework, a high- FES2014 resolution child domain, covering Hudson Strait, is coupled with a relatively low-resolution parent domain for TPXO9-atlas computational efficiency. Data such as barotropic pressure and velocity are exchanged between the childand parent domains with the external coupler OASIS3-MCT. The developed nesting framework is validated with semi-idealized basin-scale model simulations. The M2 sea-surface heights show very good accuracy in the one- way and two-way nesting simulations in Hudson Strait, where large tidal elevations are observed. In addition, the mass and tidal energy flux are not adversely impacted at the nesting boundaries in the semi-idealized si- mulations. In a next step, the nesting framework is applied to a realistic global tide simulation. In this simulation, the resolution of the child domain (1/75°) is three times as fine as that of the parent domain (1/25°). TheM2 sea- surface-height root-mean-square errors with tide gauge data and the altimetry-constrained global FES2014 and TPXO9-atlas tidal solutions are evaluated for the nesting and no-nesting solutions. The better resolved coastal bathymetry and the finer grid in the child domain improve the local tides in Hudson Strait and Bay,the back-effect of the coastal tides induces an improvement of the barotropic tides in the open ocean oftheAtlantic. 1. Introduction cause of tidal model errors (Egbert et al., 2004). Moreover, the large errors in the North Atlantic may be attributed to the inability of the Global surface tides have been studied in barotropic (two-dimen- model to correctly simulate the known semidiurnal tidal resonances in sional) and baroclinic (three-dimensional) forward and data-assim- the North Atlantic (Wünsch, 1972). ilative simulations (Arbic et al., 2004; Arbic et al., 2009; Buijsman Both analytical models of coastal tides (e.g. the classic quarter-wa- et al., 2015; Egbert and Ray, 2001; Egbert et al., 2004; Green and velength resonance model, see for instance Defant, 1961) and more Nycander, 2013; Ngodock et al., 2016; Shriver et al., 2012; Stammer realistic numerical models of coastal tides have long treated the open et al., 2014). Despite recent progress in reducing tidal sea-surface- ocean as representing an unchanging boundary condition acting on a height root-mean-square errors (RMSE) in the global HYbrid Co- coastal region that may or may not achieve resonance depending on its ordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM), the model used in this paper, the geometry. However, in analytical and numerical studies, Arbic et al. errors in the North Atlantic near Hudson Strait, and near coastal-shelf (2009), Arbic et al. (2007), and Arbic and Garrett (2010) have shown areas in general, are still relatively large (Buijsman et al., 2015; that there is a substantial “back-effect” of coastal tides upon the open- Ngodock et al., 2016; Shriver et al., 2012). Coastal-shelf bathymetry is ocean tides. They showed that if both the shelf sea and ocean basin are imperfectly known and represented in models, and may be a likely near resonance, small geometry changes to the shelf sea can have a ⁎ Corresponding author at: Naval Research Laboratory, Code 7323, Bldg. 1009, Stennis Space Center, MS 39529, USA. E-mail address: [email protected] (C.-H. Jeon). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocemod.2019.03.007 Received 7 May 2018; Received in revised form 19 March 2019; Accepted 23 March 2019 Available online 04 April 2019 1463-5003/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. C.-H. Jeon, et al. Ocean Modelling 137 (2019) 98–113 large impact on the open-ocean tides. This suggests that if we better System Modeling Framework (ESMF) can be used to couple multiple resolve the coastal geometry by increasing the model resolution, we domains with different resolutions (Qi et al., 2018). In recent research, may not only improve the coastal tides, but also the open-ocean tides the AGRIF and OASIS3-MCT coupling toolkits have been widely ap- through the back-effect, in particular if the shelf and ocean basins are plied. The AGRIF (Adaptive Grid Refinement In Fortran) coupler has near resonance, as is the case in the North Atlantic near Hudson Strait. been used to couple ocean circulation models (Debreu et al., 2012; In general, higher resolution yields more accurate tides in forward Penven et al., 2006; Urrego-Blanco et al., 2016). The OASIS3-MCT models (Egbert et al., 2004). However, high-resolution model simula- coupler (Valcke et al., 2015) has been used to couple climate models tions are computationally expensive and require large data storage. To (Juricke et al., 2014; Ličer et al., 2016; Wahle et al., 2017; Will et al., achieve higher resolution in regions of interest without dramatically 2017). OASIS3-MCT is an integrated version of OASIS3 (Ocean Atmo- increasing the cost of a basin- or global-scale model, one can use two- sphere Sea Ice and Soil) by CERFACS in France and MCT (Model Cou- way nesting, as introduced in Spall and Holland (1991). The basic idea pling Toolkit) by the Argonne National laboratory in USA. We utilize of two-way nesting is to apply a high-resolution (fine) grid only toa OASIS3-MCT as a coupler for the HYCOM to HYCOM two-way nesting small area of interest, i.e., the ‘child’ domain, and a low-resolution because its partition option, grid and mask, and parallel computing by (coarse) grid to the entire ‘parent’ domain. In two-way nesting, in- Message Passing Interface (MPI) are more compatible with HYCOM as formation is allowed to propagate from the coarse grid to the fine grid compared to AGRIF. Scientists at the Service Hydrographique et and vice versa. In this way, the improved solution on the child grid may Océanographique de la Marine (SHOM; Brest, France) applied AGRIF to also improve the solution on the parent grid. In this paper, we imple- facilitate the HYCOM to HYCOM coupling, but found it hard to main- ment a two-way nesting framework for barotropic HYCOM simulations tain as the HYCOM code was updated (personal communication with to better simulate the local surface tides, e.g. on Hudson shelf, as well as Remy Baraille, 2015). the remote tides in the open ocean. HYCOM provides reliable results as a multi-layer global ocean cir- In the two-way nesting framework, the data exchange between the culation model and contributes to the United States Navy's operation child and parent domains occurs in two opposing directions. In the first (Arbic et al., 2010; Chassignet et al., 2007; Metzger et al., 2010; ‘coarse-to-fine’ direction, the information of the parent domain is Ngodock et al., 2016; Shriver et al., 2012). The forward barotropic tide transferred to the child domain via the lateral boundaries of the child simulations (single layer), used in this paper, employ astronomical tidal domain. Data exchange in this direction is also referred to as ‘one-way forcing, a spatially-varying self-attraction and loading (SAL) term, a nesting’. In one-way nesting, the parent domain is not updated with the linear topographic wave drag (Buijsman et al., 2015), and an atmo- child grid solution. One-way nesting has been extensively used for spheric mean sea level pressure forcing, which modulates the S2 tide basin-scale modeling (Chassignet et al., 2007; Hogan and Hurlburt, and is obtained from the atmospheric NAVGEM (NAVy Global En- 2006; Mason et al., 2010; Penven et al., 2006). In the second ‘fine-to- vironmental Model; Hogan et al., 2014). HYCOM is also capable of coarse’ direction, the coupling variables in the high-resolution child improving basin-scale modeling with offline one-way nesting domain are transferred to the relatively low-resolution parent grid. The (Chassignet et al., 2007; Hogan and Hurlburt, 2006). However, the two-way nesting approach has been widely applied in atmospheric offline one-way nesting in HYCOM has some drawbacks. First, itre- modeling (Bowden et al., 2012; Lorenz and Jacob, 2005), and in cou- quires additional data storage for nesting data, whose size increases pling of multiple climate models (Lam et al., 2009; Ličer et al., 2016; proportionally to the resolution of the computational domain. Second, Wahle et al., 2017) as well as ocean modeling (Barth et al., 2005; global-scale modeling on the parent grid must be performed in advance Debreu et al., 2012; Ginis et al., 1998). To make the updated variables of regional/basin-scale modeling on the child grid to provide boundary continuous across the nesting boundaries of the parent and child do- conditions for the child domain.