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Tidal simulation revisited

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Abstract

Accurate representation of tides is a pre-requisite for simulating many complex coastal processes. This study examines several most important factors for rigorous validation of nearshore tides: bottom friction, quality of DEM (Digital Elevation Model) information, horizontal resolution of model mesh, and 3D baroclinic effects. The results demonstrate that a rigorous model validation against tide gauge observation requires (1) good-quality DEM information be available; (2) locally very high mesh resolution (which has not been used in previous models) be used to capture the small-scale bathymetric/geometric features near the tide gauges; and (3) 3D effects be included. On the other hand, attempts to compensate errors by tuning other parameters such as bottom friction might produce erroneous results away from the validation sites, as tides undergo complex nonlinear transformations in the nearshore regime. Consequently, a most skilled tidal simulation should use a 3D model with locally very high resolution to faithfully represent DEMs of good quality (not just high resolution). Our results also highlight the central role played by the bathymetry on coastal processes.

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Data availability

All data generated and/or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work is funded by NOAA’s Water Initiative (Grant Number NA16NWS4620043). The authors thank Dr. Shachak Peeri for useful discussions for the manuscript and Dr. Linus Magnusson (ECMWF) for providing the high-resolution ERA forcing. Simulations used in this paper were conducted using the following computational facilities: (1) William & Mary Research Computing for providing computational resources and/or technical support (URL: https://www.wm.edu/it/rc); (2) the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE; Grant TG-OCE130032), which is supported by the National Science Foundation grant number OCI-1053575; and (3) the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

    Wei Huang, Y. Joseph Zhang, Zhengui Wang, Fei Ye & Haocheng Yu

  2. NOAA National Ocean Service, Silver Spring, MD, USA

    Saeed Moghimi & Edward Myers

Authors
  1. Wei Huang
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  2. Y. Joseph Zhang
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  3. Zhengui Wang
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  4. Fei Ye
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  5. Saeed Moghimi
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  6. Edward Myers
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  7. Haocheng Yu
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Correspondence to Wei Huang.

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Responsible Editor: Guoping Gao

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Huang, W., Zhang, Y.J., Wang, Z. et al. Tidal simulation revisited. Ocean Dynamics 72, 187–205 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-022-01498-9

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