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Winter impacts on cryo-hydrodynamics of an Arctic hypertidal estuary: implications on tidal-stream energy

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Abstract

Owing to the massive tidal range, available in major hypertidal estuaries along Ungava Bay (Canada), highly predictable tidal-stream power could be an optimal and clean alternative resource for the off-grid Northern communities. However, it is important to understand how the cold and long Arctic winter affects the availability of this resource. The Koksoak hypertidal estuary was studied through instrumentation over one winter season and numerical modeling to address the knowledge gap. The coupled Delft3D-FLOW-Ice model was modified and used to model the ice-covered estuary and successfully calibrated and validated against in situ observations. Numerical simulations showed that although the tidal-prism discharge diminishes under the presence of ice, the tidal-stream power potentials still remain very high. Besides, the in situ observations demonstrated an apparent tide-dependent modulation of \(\Delta T\) (the difference between water temperature and freezing temperature) with increased \(\Delta T\) during flood tides. This is a major benefit for tidal-stream deployment as any accumulation of frazil ice on the blades would be very short lived.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Terese Herron and Andrew Leyzack (CHS) for providing year-long measurements at the estuary entrance, and to Scott Youngblut for the bathymetric data and documentation. We would also like to thank Jarlath McEntee and the Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) for the invitation to participate in the Polar Knowledge project that helped finance the principal author. Thanks go to Dany Crépault (Université Laval) for help in the construction and assembly of the instrument packages for the field data collection in Kuujjuaq and to Peter Duncan (Nunavik Rotors) and Bruce Turner (Tivi Inc) for logistical supports in Kuujjuaq during spatial and temporal surveys. Acknowledgment also goes to Erik de Goede (Deltares) for providing documentation of the Delft3D-Ice module, and to the independent reviewers for the constructive comments and edits in the previous versions of this work.

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  1. Département de génie civil et de génie des eaux, Université Laval, Québec, QC, G1V0A6, Canada

    Abdolvahid Mohammadian, Brian Morse & Jean-Loup Robert

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  1. Abdolvahid Mohammadian
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  2. Brian Morse
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  3. Jean-Loup Robert
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Correspondence to Abdolvahid Mohammadian.

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Mohammadian, A., Morse, B. & Robert, JL. Winter impacts on cryo-hydrodynamics of an Arctic hypertidal estuary: implications on tidal-stream energy. J. Ocean Eng. Mar. Energy 7, 459–479 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40722-021-00207-w

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