The Coastal Gulf of Alaska Circulation Model (3-km grid)

The SALMON Project is currently utilizing the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) to run numerical simulations of the circulation of the coastal Gulf of Alaska. The model in use is called the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), developed jointly by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and Rutgers University. It is run at a resolution of three kilometers and aligned in a nested grid configuration with Al Hermann's North East Pacific (NEP) domain. Open boundary conditions are provided by the NEP model and COADS monthly mean wind fields are used for the surface forcing. Tidal forcings are computed from Mike Foreman's northeast Pacific Ocean high-resolution assimilating tide model (Foreman et al., 2000) and are applied along the open boundaries of the model domain. Fresh water inputs consist of a continous line source of monthly mean values computed by Tom Royer's hydrologic model (Royer et al., 2001). The latest ROMS model run simulated three idealized years of circulation in the northern Gulf of Alaska.