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 is newly developed as part of the GOMRI-funded CONCORDE consortium and has been configured with 400 m spatial resolution and 24 vertical layers. 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 1km was used as outer boundary condition forcing. Surface atmospheric forcing is a low-passed (24-hour filtered) version of the 1 km hourly product that was also developed as part of the CONCORDE consortium’s modeling component (the CONCORDE Meteorological Analysis - CMA). This filtering removes high-frequency meteorological forcing, such as the diurnal sea breeze, allowing for scenario testing that reveals the impact of high-frequency winds on estuarine - shelf exchange. The model output contained in this dataset provides an hourly resolution of physical parameters (currents, temperature, salinity, water levels) for the time frame around the Bonnet Carré Spillway Cruise sampling campaign of the CONCORDE observational teams (2016-01-12 to 2016-02-12).

Suggested Citation:

Wiggert, Jerry, M. Kemal Cambazoglu, Chudong Pan, Mike Dinniman. 2020. Physical Model of the Mississippi Sound and Bight from 2016-01-12 to 2016-02-12 with Low-pass Filtered Meteorological Forcing. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/HW92GQYP

Purpose:

The model output for this time frame from the CONCORDE synthetic model has been generated with the explicit purpose of providing environmental context to support the interpretation of the ship-based field measurements obtained during the Spring field campaign of the CONCORDE consortium. Through the application of low-pass filtered meteorological forcing, impact of high frequency (diel) wind impacts can be identified.

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. Low-pass (24-hour) filtered meteorological forcing allowed assessment of the effects of high-frequency winds on estuarine-shelf exchange. 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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