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A 1/8° coupled biochemical-physical Indian Ocean Regional Model: Physical results and validation

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Abstract

A coupled physical-biochemical Indian Ocean Regional Model (IORM), based on the Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM) and the Carbon Silicate Nitrogen Ecosystem (CoSiNE) model was configured with the primary objective of providing an accurate estimate of the oceanic physical state along with the biochemical processes simulated by CoSiNE to understand the variability in the Indian Ocean (IO). The model did not assimilate any data; instead, weak relaxation of temperature and salinity was implemented to keep the model stable in the long-term simulations. In this study, the skill of the IORM in simulating physical states in the IO was evaluated. Basin-scale surface circulation and cross-sectional transports were compared to observations, which demonstrated that the model replicated most of the observed features with reasonably good accuracy. Consistency and biases in the upper ocean temperature, salinity, and mixed layer depth were also analyzed. Lastly, the seasonality in the IO, its response to monsoonal forcing, and the evolution and dynamics of surface and subsurface dipole events were examined. The IORM reproduced most of the dynamic features including Ekman pumping, wave propagation, and climate variability at both annual and interannual time scales. The internal ocean dynamics and behavior of the modeled sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) suggest a coupled ocean/atmosphere instability that will require further research, including sensitivity experiments to realize improvements in model parameterization.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA11010304), the China Scholarship Counsel (No. 201304910293), and the Natural Science Foundation of China (41476012). The modeling work was supported by NASA grant number NNX07AK82G, and the model simulations were performed at the Navy DoD Supercomputing Resource Center, Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. The authors thank Dr. Feng Zhou and Dr. Yan Du for their suggestions and comments. Thanks also to the NOAA/OSCAR group for providing satellite-derived current data. The RAMA data were provided by the TAO Project Office at NOAA/PMEL. The altimeter products are produced by SSALTO/DUACS and distributed by AVISO. XBT data are sourced from the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS); IMOS is supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and the Super Science Initiative (SSI). The satellite-derived salinity data were obtained from the “Centre Aval de Traitement des Données SMOS” (CATDS), operated for the “Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales” (CNES, France) by IFREMER (Brest, France)

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

    Ke Huang, Huijie Xue, Peng Xiu, Qiang Xie & Dongxiao Wang

  2. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Ke Huang

  3. Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, Hancock, MS, 39529, USA

    Sergio Derada

  4. School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, 5706 Aubert Hall, Orono, ME, 04469-5706, USA

    Huijie Xue & Fei Chai

  5. Sanya Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sanya, Hainan, China

    Qiang Xie

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  1. Ke Huang
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Correspondence to Huijie Xue.

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Responsible Editor: Jianping Gan

This article is part of the Topical Collection on the 6th International Workshop on Modeling the Ocean (IWMO) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada 23-27 June 2014

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Huang, K., Derada, S., Xue, H. et al. A 1/8° coupled biochemical-physical Indian Ocean Regional Model: Physical results and validation. Ocean Dynamics 65, 1121–1142 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-015-0860-8

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