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Wind and density driven flow along the Texas-Louisiana continental shelf
Rob Hetland
Zhaoru ZhangMartino Marta-AlmeidaXiaoqian Zhang
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The Gulf of Mexico has a number of environmental problems:
Karenia brevisPhoto credit: Florida Fish and Photo credit: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation CommissionWildlife Conservation Commission
NASA MODISMay 24, 2010
Harmfulalgal blooms
Oil spills
Bottom hypoxia
LUMCON - July 24-27, 2012
And the listgoes on....
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Series of Models:
Wind-driven surface current predictions
for entire gulf – focused on TX shelf
Louisiana shelf wind/buoyancy driven flow
TX/LA shelf wind/buoyancy driven flow
NEXT TALK
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QuickTime™ and aAnimation decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Animation courtesy Chris Barker (NOAA R&R)Surface currents provided by Rob Hetland and Steve Baum, TAMUFunding by the Texas General
Land Office TABS program
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B
D
F
J
K
N
R
V
W
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~3 hr lag
~12 hr lag
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Four examples of non-summer convergent events
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Wind Currents
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No river case
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Wind
Obs.
Model
20092006 10 year mean
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QuickTime™ and a decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Climatological winds over the Texas-Louisiana shelf
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Non-summer mean
Summer mean
Cho et al. (JGR, 1998)
Seasonal surface currents from LATEX moorings
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JFM mean density cross-section
JFM mean along-shore currents
Thermal wind balance currents
u|z=h=0
Along-shore currents are nearly in thermal-wind balance
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Meade et al. (1995)USGS Circular 1133
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Low flow year
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Medium flow year
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High flow year
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Every third grid point shown
HYCOM IASNFS (subset) NGOM
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Parent models Nested modelsCLMDataset
Model salinity skill
Red = good (within 10% of max skill)
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where
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Perturbed simulations(±5% wind and rivers)
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Noise at a point on the shelf
Domain average noise
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Conclusions:
Nesting improves model skill, but it does not appear to matter which model is used*.
Although there is significant unpredictable, small-scale eddies at the submesoscale, the large scale plume structure is reproducible in a model without data assimilation.
*For salinity, anyways...