A coastal ocean model intercomparison study for a three-dimensional idealised test case
Type | Article | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Date | 1998-03 | ||||||||
Language | English | ||||||||
Author(s) | Tartinville B1, Deleersnijder E1, Lazure Pascal2, Proctor R3, Ruddick Kg4, Uittenbogaard Re5 | ||||||||
Affiliation(s) | 1 : Univ Catholique Louvain, Inst Astron & Geophys G Lemaitre, B-1348 Louvain, Belgium. 2 : IFREMER, Ctr Brest, Lab Hydrodynam & Sedimentol, F-29280 Plouzane, France. 3 : Bidston Observ, Proudman Oceanog Lab, Birkenhead L43 7RA, Merseyside, England. 4 : Management Unit N Sea Math Models, B-1200 Brussels, Belgium. 5 : Delft Hydraul, NL-2629 HD Delft, Netherlands. |
||||||||
Source | Applied Mathematical Modelling (0307-904X) (Elsevier Science Inc), 1998-03 , Vol. 22 , N. 3 , P. 165-182 | ||||||||
DOI | 10.1016/S0307-904X(98)00015-8 | ||||||||
WOS© Times Cited | 14 | ||||||||
Keyword(s) | model intercomparison, advection, baroclinic instability, geostrophic balance | ||||||||
Abstract | Several coastal ocean models have been used to compute the circulation on the Northwest European Continental Shelf. Five of them, developed within the European Union, are compared in the scope of an idealised three-dimensional test case, dealing with the geostrophic adjustment of a freshwater cylinder. As the central eddy adjusts, unstable baroclinic vortices start to grow. All the models are able to produce such unstable vortices. However, two of them produce an order-two instability, which is in accordance with a previous laboratory experiment, while the others exhibit an order-four instability. Using a simple scaling analysis, it is seen that the azimuthal wavenumber depends on the ratio of the kinetic energy to the available potential energy. It appears that the discrepancy in the azimuthal wavenumber is mainly due to the effect of the discretisation of the horizontal advection of momentum which could produce significant decrease of the total kinetic energy. |
||||||||
Full Text |
|