Regional Coastal Ocean

Modeling

Patrick Marchesiello
Brest, 2005

Patrick Marchesiello IRD 2005 1

The Coastal Ocean:
A Challenging Environment
 Geometrical constraints: irregular coastlines and highly
variable bathymetry
 Forcing is internal (intrinsic), lateral and superficial: tides,
winds, buoyancy
 Broad range of space/time scales of coastal structures
and dynamics: fronts, intense currents, coastal trapped
waves, (sub)mesoscale variability, turbulent mixing in
surface and bottom boundary layers
 Heterogeneity of regional and local characteristics:
eastern/western boundary systems; regions can be
dominated by tides, opened/closed to deep ocean
 Complexe Physical-biogeochemical interactions

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Numerical Modeling

 Require highly optimized models of

significant dynamical complexity
 In the past: simplified models due to limited
computer resources
 In recent years: based on fully nonlinear
stratified Primitive Equations

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Coastal Model Inventory
 POM
 ROMS
 MARS3D Finite-Difference Models
 SYMPHONIE
 GHERM
 HAMSOM
 QUODDY Finite-Elements Models
 MOG3D
 SEOM

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Patrick Marchesiello IRD 2005 5
Hydrodynamics

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Primitive
Momentum

Equations:
Hydrostatic,
Incompressible,
Boussinesq Tracer

Hydrostatic

Similar transport equations Continuity

for other tracers: passive or
actives

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Vertical Coordinate System

 Bottom following
coordinate (sigma):
best representation of
bottom dynamics:

 but subject to pressure

gradient errors on steep
bathymetry

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 GENERALIZED
-COORDINATE
Stretching &
condensing of
vertical resolution

(a) Ts=0, Tb=0

(b) Ts=8, Tb=0
(c) Ts=8, Tb=1
(d) Ts=5, Tb=0.4

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Horizontal Coordinate System

 Orthogonal curvilinear
coordinates

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 Primitive
Equations in
Curvilinear
Coordinate

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Simplified Equations

 2D barotropic
 Tidal problems
 2D vertical
 Upwelling
 1D vertical
 Turbulent mixing problems (with
boundary layer parameterization)

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Barotropic Equations

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Vertical Problems:
Parameterization of Surface and
Bottom Boundary Layers

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 Boundary Layer
Parameterization
 Boundary layers are
characterized by strong
turbulent mixing

 Turbulent Mixing depends on: Reynolds term:

 Surface/bottom forcing: w’T’
 Wind / bottom-shear stress stirring
 Stable/unstable buoyancy forcing
 Interior conditions:
 Current shear instability
 Stratification

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Surface and Bottom Forcing

Wind stress

Heat Flux
Salt Flux

Bottom stress

Drag Coefficient CD:

γ1=3.10-4 m/s Linear
γ2=2.5 10-3 Quadratic

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Boundary Layer Parameterization
 All mixed layer schemes are based on
one-dimentional « column physics »
 Boundary layer parameterizations are
based either on:
 Turbulent closure (Mellor-Yamada, TKE)
 K profile (KPP)
 Note: Hydrostatic stability may require
large vertical diffusivities:
 implicit numerical methods are best suited.
 convective adjustment methods (infinite
diffusivity) for explicit methods

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Application: Tidal Fronts

ROMS
Simulation in
the Iroise
Sea (Front
d’Ouessant)
Simpson-Hunter
criterium for tidal
fronts position

1.5 < <2

H. Muller, 2004

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Bottom Shear Stress – Wave effect

 c    /ln( za /z0 ) u2z z

2
a

 w  12 f w ub2 ; f w  1.39(ub /z0 )0.52

 Waves enhance bottom shear stress (Soulsby 1995):

   w  
3.2

 cw   c 1 1.2  
  c   w  

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Numerical Discretization

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A Discrete Ocean

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Structured / Unstructured Grids
Finite Differences / Elements

 Structured grids: the grid cells have the same

number of sides
 Unstructured grids: the domain is tiled using more
general geometrical shapes (triangles, …) pieced
together to optimally fit details of the geometry
 Good for tidal modeling, engineering applications
 Problems: geostrophic balance accuracy, wave scattering
by non-uniform grids, conservation and positivity
properties, …

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Finite Difference (Grid Point) Method

 If we know:
 The ocean state at time t (u,v,w,T,S, …)
 Boundary conditions (surface, bottom, lateral
sides)
 We can compute the ocean state at t+dt
using numerical approximations of Primitive
Equations

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Horizontal and Vertical Grids

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Consistent Schemes:
Taylor series expansion, truncation errors
 We need to find an consistent approximation
for the equations derivatives
 Taylor series expansion of f at point x:

Truncation
error
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Exemple: Advection Equation

Dx grid space
Dt time step
Dt

Dx

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Order of Accuracy
First order
Downstream

Upstream

2nd order
Centered

4th order

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Numerical properties:
stability, dispersion/diffusion
 Leapfrog / Centered Advection equation:
Tin+1 = Ti n-1 - C (Ti+1n - Ti-1n) ; C = u0 dt / dx
Conditionally stable: CFL condition C <
1 but dispersive (computational modes)

 Euler / Centered should be non-dispersive:the

Tin+1 = Ti n - C (Ti+1n - Ti-1n) phase speed ω/k and group
Unconditionally unstable speed δω/δk are equal and
constant (uo)
 Upstream
Tin+1 = Ti n - C (Tin - Ti-1n) , C > 0
Tin+1 = Ti n - C (Ti+1n - Tin) , C < 0 2nd order approx to the
Conditionally stable, modified equation:
not dispersive but diffusive
(monotone linear scheme)

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Numerical Properties
A numerical scheme can be:
• Dispersive: ripples, overshoot and
extrema (centered)
• Diffusive (upstream)
• Unstable (Euler/centered)

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Weakly Dispersive, Weakly Diffusive Schemes

 Using high order upstream schemes:

 3rd order upstream biased
 Using a right combination of a centered scheme
and a diffusive upstream scheme
 TVD, FCT, QUICK, MPDATA, UTOPIA, PPM
 Using flux limiters to build nolinear monotone
schemes and guarantee positivity and
monotonicity for tracers and avoid false extrema
(FCT, TVD)
 Note: order of accuracy does not reduce
dispersion of shorter waves

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 Upstream

Centered

2nd order
flux limited

3rd order
flux limited

Durran, 2004

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Accuracy
Numerical dispersion

2nd order
High order accurate methods:
optimal choice (lower cost for a given
accuracy) for general ocean circulation 4th order
models is 3RD OR 4TH ORDER accurate
methods (Sanderson, 1998)

With special care to: 2nd order

• dispersion / diffusion double resolution
• monotonicity and positivity
• Combination of methods
Spectral method

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Sensitivity to the Methods: Example
OPA - 0.25 deg ROMS – 0.25 deg

C. Blanc C. Blanc

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Properties of Horizontal
Grids

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 Arakawa Staggered Grids
Linear shallow water equation:

 A staggered difference is 4 times

more accurate than non-staggered
and improves the dispersion
relation because of reduced use of
averaging operators
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Horizontal Arakawa grids
 B grid is prefered at coarse resolution:
 Superior for poorly resolved inertia-gravity waves.
 Good for Rossby waves: collocation of velocity points.
 Bad for gravity waves: computational checkboard mode.
 C grid is prefered at fine resolution:
 Superior for gravity waves.
 Good for well resolved inertia-gravity waves.
 Bad for poorly resolved waves: Rossby waves
(computational checkboard mode) and inertia-gravity
waves due to averaging the Coriolis force.
 Combinations can also be used (A + C)

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Arakawa-C Grid

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Vertical
Staggered
Grid

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Numerical Round-off Errors

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Round-off Errors
 Round-off errors result from inability of computers to represent a
floating point number to infinite precision.
 Round-off errors tend to accumulate but little control on the
magnitude of cumulative errors is possible.
 1byte=8bits, ex:10100100
 Simple precision machine (32-bit):
1 word=4 bytes, 6 significant digits
 Double precision machine (64-bit):
1 word=8 bytes, 15 significant digits
 Accuracy depends on word length and fractions assigned to
mantissa and exponent.
 Double precision is possible on a machine of any given basic
precision (using software instructions), but penalty is: slowdown
in computation.

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Time Stepping

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Time Stepping: Standard

 Leapfrog: φin+1 = φi n-1 + 2 Δt F(φin)

 computational mode amplifies when applied to
nonlinear equations (Burger, PE)

 Leapfrog + Asselin-Robert filter:

φin+1 = φfi n-1 + 2 Δt F(φin)
φfi n = φi n + 0.5 α (φin+1 - 2 φin + φfin-1)
 reduction of accuracy to 1rst order depending on

α (usually 0.1)

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Time Stepping: Performance

C = 0.5 C = 0.2

Kantha and Clayson (2000) after Durran (1991)

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Time Stepping: New Standards
 Multi-time level schemes:
Multi-time level
scheme
 Adams-Bashforth 3rd order (AB3)
 Adams-Moulton 3rd order (AM3)

 Multi-stage Predictor/Corrector scheme

Multi-stage
scheme

 Increase of robustness and stability range

 LF-Trapezoidal, LF-AM3, Forward-Backward

 Runge-Kutta 4: best but expensive

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Barotropic Dynamics
and Time Splitting

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Time step restrictions
 The Courant-Friedrichs-Levy CFL stability condition on the
barotropic (external) fast mode limits the time step:
Δtext < Δx / Cext where Cext = √gH + Uemax
ex: H =4000 m, Cext = 200 m/s (700 km/h)
Δx = 1 km, Δtext < 5 s
 Baroclinic (internal) slow mode:
Cin ~ 2 m/s + Uimax (internal gravity wave phase speed + max
advective velocity)
Δx = 1 km, Δtext < 8 mn
 Δtin / Δtext ~ 60-100 !
 Additional diffusion and rotational conditions:
Δtin < Δx2 / 2 Ah and Δtin < 1 / f

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Barotropic Dynamics
 The fastest mode (barotropic) imposes a
short time step
 3 methods for releasing the time-step
constraint:
 Rigid-lid approximation
 Implicit time-stepping
 Explicit time-spitting of barotropic and baroclinic
modes
 Note: depth-averaged flow is an
approximation of the fast mode (exactly true
only for gravity waves in a flat bottom ocean)
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Rigid-lid Streamfunction Method

 Advantage: fast mode is properly filtered

 Disadvantages:
 Preclude direct incorporation of tidal processes, storm
surges, surface gravity waves.
 Elliptic problem to solve:
 convergence is difficult with complexe geometry; numerical
instabilities near regions of steep slope (smoothing required)
 Matrix inversion (expensive for large matrices); Bad
scaling properties on parallel machines
 Fresh water input difficult
 Distorts dispersion relation for Rossby waves

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Implicit Free Surface Method

 Numerical damping to supress barotropic

waves
 Disadvantanges:
 Not really adapted to tidal processes unless Δt is
reduced, then optimality is lost
 Involves an elliptic problem
 matrix inversion
 Bad parallelization performances

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Time Splitting
Explicit free surface method

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Barotropic Dynamics:Time Splitting

 Direct integration of barotropic equations, only few

assumptions; competitive with previous methods at
high resolution (avoid penalty on elliptic solver);
good parallelization performances

 Disadvantages: potential instability issues involving

difficulty of cleanly separating fast and slow modes

 Solution:
 time averaging over the barotropic sub-cycle
 finer mode coupling

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Time Splitting: Averaging
Averaging
weights

ROMS

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Time Splitting: Coupling terms

Coupling terms: advection (dispersion) + baroclinic PGF

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 Internal
Flow mode
Diagram
External
of POM mode

Forcing terms
of external mode

Replace barotropic part

in internal mode

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Vertical Diffusion

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Vertical
Diffusion

Semi-
implicit
Crank-
Nicholson
scheme

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Pressure Gradient Force

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PGF Problem
 Truncation errors are made
from calculating the baroclinic
pressure gradients across
sharp topographic changes
such as the continental slope

 Difference between 2 large

terms

 Errors can appear in the

unforced flat stratification
experiment

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 Reducing PGF Truncation Errors
 Smoothing the topography using a
nonlinear filter and a criterium: r = Δh / h < 0.2

 Using a density formulation

 Using high order schemes to reduce

the truncation error (4th order,
McCalpin, 1994)

 Gary, 1973: substracting a reference

horizontal averaged value from
density (ρ’= ρ - ρa) before computing
pressure gradient
 Rewritting Equation of State: reduce
passive compressibility effects on
pressure gradient

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Equation of State
Full UNESCO EOS:
30% of total CPU!

Jackett &
McDougall,
1995: 10% Linearization
of CPU (ROMS):
reduces PGF
errors

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Smoothing methods
 r = Δh / h is the slope of the logarithm of h
 One method (ROMS) consists of smoothing ln(h)
until r < rmax

Res: 5 km Res: 1 km
r < 0.25 r < 0.25

Senegal Bathymetry Profil

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Smoothing method and resolution
Bathymetry Smoothing Error off Senegal
Standard Deviation [m]

Convergence at
~ 4 km resolution

Grid Resolution [deg]

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Errors in Bathymetry data compilations
Gebco1 compilation Etopo2: Satellite observations

Shelf errors
(noise)

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Wetting and Drying Schemes

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Wetting and Drying: Principles
 Application:
 Intertidal zone
 Storm surges
 Principles:
 mask/unmask
drying/wetting
areas at every time
step
 Criterium based on
a minimum depth
 Requirements
 Conservation
properties

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