Modeling river plume dynamics with the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model

Schiller, Rafael Vergara; Kourafalou, Vassiliki H.

doi:10.1016/j.ocemod.2009.12.005

Cited by 66 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…In particular, as in the NGOM simulation, the 1/50°GoM-HYCOM forcing includes realistic daily river forcing from 15 major rivers in the US part of the domain, obtained through the US Geological Survey (USGS), while additional small rivers are represented by their monthly climatology. Freshwater sources from rivers are prescribed following the updated parameterization by Schiller and Kourafalou (2010), which includes both salt and momentum fluxes due to the river discharge and allows a choice of distributing this freshwater discharge below the surface near the river mouth (here, a 5-m downward penetration is imposed, at three major discharge points around the MR Delta). There is no relaxation of salinity in the interior of the domain.…”

Section: The Hycom Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mississippi waters reaching South Florida reefs under no flood conditions: synthesis of observing and modeling system findings

Hénaff

Kourafalou

2016

Ocean Dynamics

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In August 2014, in situ measurements revealed an intense salinity drop impacting South Florida coral reefs, between Pulley Ridge (Southwest Florida Shelf) and the Florida Keys. The low salinity waters had a surface signal of 32 (down from 35.2) and extended over a 15-20-m deep lens. Satellite observations showed that this abrupt drop in salinity was due to a southeastward export of Mississippi River waters from the Northern Gulf of Mexico (GoM), revealing strong interaction between coastal and oceanic flows. Unlike previous events of marked long-distance Mississippi water export, this episode is not associated with Mississippi flooding conditions, which makes it a unique study case. We have developed a highresolution (~2 km) comprehensive hydrodynamic numerical model of the GoM to study the conditions that controlled the 2014 Mississippi River water export episode. It is based on the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) and assimilates remotely sensed altimetry and sea surface temperature observations, to ensure that the simulated upper-ocean is realistic.

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Section: The Hycom Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mississippi waters reaching South Florida reefs under no flood conditions: synthesis of observing and modeling system findings

Hénaff

Kourafalou

2016

Ocean Dynamics

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“…Many studies build up a plume classification based on these parameters, according to various criteria such as the relative offshore extension of the bulge compared to the coastal current (Chao 1988a) or the meanders and instabilities developed by the coastal current (Schiller and Kourafalou 2010). Garvine (1999) appears to be the first to provide the quasi-exhaustive list of physical parameters that influence the plume shape.…”

Section: A General Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, it is not a common feature as it opposes the predicted extent of the coastal current in the direction of the coastal Kelvin wave propagation (Chao 1988a) and is abnormally large [reaching 850 km according to Hopkins et al (2013)]. Many theoretical (Yankovsky and Chapman 1997;Nof and Pichevin 2001) and numerical studies (Chao and Boicourt 1986;Chao 1988a;Kourafalou et al 1996;Garvine 1999;Schiller and Kourafalou 2010) have described the dynamics of midlatitude river plumes and the associated mechanisms of advection and diffusion of freshwater in the unforced case. They have also evaluated the impact of external forcing such as the wind or the bottom topography on plumes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics of an Equatorial River Plume: Theory and Numerical Experiments Applied to the Congo Plume Case

Vic

Berger²,

Tréguier

et al. 2014

Journal of Physical Oceanography

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The Congo River has the second largest rate of flow in the world and is mainly responsible for the broad tongue of low-salinity water that is observed in the Gulf of Guinea. Despite their importance, near-equatorial river plumes have not been studied as thoroughly as midlatitude plumes and their dynamics remain unclear. Using both theory and idealized numerical experiments that reproduce the major characteristics of the region, the authors have investigated the dynamics of the Congo River plume and examine its sensitivity to different forcing mechanisms. It is found that near-equatorial plumes are more likely to be surface trapped than midlatitude plumes, and the importance of the b effect in describing the strong offshore extent of the lowsalinity tongue during most of the year is demonstrated. It is shown that the buoyant plume constrained by the geomorphology is subject to the b pulling of nonlinear structures and wavelike equatorial dynamics. The wind is found to strengthen the intrinsic buoyancy-driven dynamics and impede the development of the coastal southward current, in coherence with observations.

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“…Hence, any model of plume evolution is particularly sensitive to how turbulence is parametrized (Luketina and Imberger, 1989;Oey and Mellor, 1993;Ruddick et al, 1995;Garvine, 1995;Kourafalou et al, 1996;Hetland, 2005Hetland, , 2010Schiller and Kourafalou, 2010;Wang et al, 2011;Hwang et al, 2011).…”

Section: K a Korotenko Et Al: Effects Of Bottom Topography On Dynamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Boicourt, 1981;Münchow and Garvine, 1993;Simpson and Souza, 1995a, b;Zavialov et al, 2003;Guo and Valle-Levinson, 2007;O'Donnell et al, 1998;MacCready et al, 2009;Jay et al, 2009;Warrick and Stevens, 2011;Kilcher et al, 2012), theoretical and numerical approaches (e.g. Chao, 1988;Oey and Mellor, 1993;Garvine, 1995Garvine, , 2001Ruddick et al, 1995;Kourafalou et al, 1996;Yankovsky and Chapman, 1997;Kasai et al, 2000;Korotenko, 2000;Valle-Levinson et al, 2003;Cushman-Roisin et al, 2007;Schiller and Kourafalou, 2010;Hwang et al, 2011), as well as laboratory experiments (Whitehead and Chapman, 1986;Avicola and Huq, 2002;Lentz and Helfrich, 2002;Horner-Devine et al, 2006;Yeping and Horner-Devine, 2013). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of bottom topography on dynamics of river discharges in tidal regions: case study of twin plumes in Taiwan Strait

et al. 2014

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Abstract. The Princeton Ocean Model (POM) is used to investigate the intratidal variability of currents and turbulent mixing and their impact on the characteristics and evolution of the plumes of two neighbouring rivers, the Zhuoshui River and the Wu River, at the central eastern coast of Taiwan Strait. The two estuaries are located close to each other and their conditions are similar in many respects, and yet the two plumes exhibit significantly different behaviour. We explain this through differences of the bottom topography in the areas adjacent to the two river mouths. The Zhuoshui River runs into a shallow area that is permanently exposed to strong tidal mixing, while the Wu River mouth is located in a deeper, stratified area outside the region of intense mixing. This destruction of the plume by tidal mixing is confirmed by the results of numerical modeling with POM. The spatial and temporal variability of turbulent kinetic energy, the rates of its production by shear and destruction rate by buoyancy in the study, as well as the horizontal diffusivity, are analysed with the emphasis given to the dependence of the turbulence parameters on the bottom topography on the one hand and their influence on the river plumes on the other. The results of the study support the central hypothesis of this paper: the dynamic behaviours of the Zhuoshui and Wu plumes are different because their evolution occurs under different regimes of bottom-generated turbulent mixing.Further, we use a Lagrangian particle tracking model in combination with POM to investigate the effect of the tidal wetting-and-drying (WAD) near the Zhuoshui River estuary, and demonstrate that WAD leads to significant reduction of the plume extent and surface salinity deficit near the river mouth. We use observational data from a short field campaign in the study area to tune and validate the model experiments.

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Modeling river plume dynamics with the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model

Cited by 66 publications

References 71 publications

Mississippi waters reaching South Florida reefs under no flood conditions: synthesis of observing and modeling system findings

Mississippi waters reaching South Florida reefs under no flood conditions: synthesis of observing and modeling system findings

Dynamics of an Equatorial River Plume: Theory and Numerical Experiments Applied to the Congo Plume Case

Effects of bottom topography on dynamics of river discharges in tidal regions: case study of twin plumes in Taiwan Strait

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