Abstract:

Model output of circulation, water mass and dynamical properties (currents, temperature, salinity, and sea level) for the Mississippi Bight and Mississippi Sound region of the northern Gulf of Mexico. The model application was developed as part of the GOMRI-funded CONCORDE consortium and has been configured with 400 m spatial resolution and 24 vertical layers. Surface atmospheric forcing is from a 1 km hourly product that resolves the diurnal sea breeze, which was also developed as part of the CONCORDE consortium’s modeling component (the CONCORDE Meteorological Analysis - CMA). Observed freshwater input derived from available tide gauge stations are applied as riverine forcing, and the Naval Research Laboratory-Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NRL-NCOM) output at 1 km was used as outer boundary condition forcing. The model output provided in this dataset provides a daily resolution of physical parameters (currents, temperature, salinity, water levels) for the 2015 summer recruitment season of oysters in Mississippi Sound (2015-05-14 to 2015-07-14). Other related data are available under GRIIDC Unique Dataset Identifiers (UDIs) MS.x841.000:0008 (DOI: 10.7266/SPKQN0AT), MS.x841.000:0009 (DOI: 10.7266/2SP9XTRT), MS.x841.000:0010 (DOI: 10.7266/ZKM29VT2), MS.x841.000:0012 (DOI: 10.7266/CGFJ6TY4), and MS.x841.000:0013 (DOI: 10.7266/FYMFTNPP).

Suggested Citation:

Kemal Cambazoglu, Jerry Wiggert. 2020. Physical Model of the Mississippi Sound and Bight from 2015-05-14 to 2015-07-14. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/QXZVP60A

Purpose:

The model output for this time frame from the CONCORDE synthetic model have been generated with the explicit purpose of providing environmental context during the summer 2015 oyster recruitment season.

Data Parameters and Units:

Key parameters are Time (ocean_time [seconds elapsed since 2014-01-01 00:00:00]), latitude (lat_rho at the center of grid faces, lat_u at u velocity points, lat_v at v velocity_points, and lat_psi at grid nodes [decimal degrees N]), longitude (lon_rho at the center of grid faces, lon_u at u velocity points, lon_v at v velocity_points, and lon_psi at grid nodes [decimal degrees W]), u, u_eastward, and ubar (quasi-zonal, zonal, and vertically-integrated zonal velocity, [m/s]), v, v_northward, and vbar (quasi-meridional, meridional, and vertically-integrated meridional velocity, [m/s]), zeta (height of the free surface [m]), w (vertical velocity [m/s]), temp (potential temperature [degrees C]), salt (salinity), sustr (zonal surface momentum stress [N/m^2]), svstr (meridional momentum stress [N/m^2]), h (bathymetry [m]), s_rho (s-coordinate values at the rho-points [0:-1]), and s_w (s-coordinate values at the w-points [0:-1]). Other included variables are the Coriolis parameter, wet/dry masks at all defined points, all parameters needed to convert s-coordinates to other vertical coordinate systems, the background diffusion coefficients, including switches for tracers, sources, sponge layers, climatology processing, and momentum field processing; time steps and intervals for histories, grid descriptions; diffusion and mixing coefficient fields; drag coefficients; surface and bottom roughness; and the angle between the grid coordinates and physical zonal/meridional coordinates.

Methods:

A COAWST-ROMS (Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Wave Sediment Transport-Regional Ocean Modeling System) model configured to the Mississippi Bight was used to simulate dynamics the Mississippi Sound and Mississippi Bight. The original COAWST code is publicly available at https://www.usgs.gov/software/coupled-ocean-atmosphere-wave-sediment-transport-coawst-modeling-system.

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