Author(s): Oleksandr Nesterov; Christopher Scraggs; Francois Smit; Gary P. Mocke
Linked Author(s): Oleksandr Nesterov
Keywords: Hydrodynamics of the Arabian Gulf; Seawater temperature modeling; Dispersion modeling; Cooling and wastewater outfalls; Modeling of stratified flows; One-way nesting approach; MIKE21; MIKE3
Abstract: A series of industrial expansions and new developments along the coast of the United Arab Emirates that involve the extraction and discharge of seawater has stimulated interest in the modeling of seawater temperatures in the southern Arabian Gulf. A one-way three-level nesting approach has been developed for this purpose based on the application of the commercially-available software package MIKE. The outer layer of this nesting is represented by a regional-scale model of the seawater circulation in the entire Arabian Gulf and part of the Oman Sea. It is forced by water levels prescribed along its open boundary, which are based on the predictions of the astronomical tide model FES’2004, and meteorological fields extracted from the publicly-available archives of the Global Data Assimilation System developed by ARL NOAA. The study has shown that accounting for the meteorological forcing has resulted in a noticeable improvement in the predictions of hydrodynamic fields at the UAE coast, including the prediction of water levels. The paper presents details of the approach, discusses effects related to thermal stratification and provides recommendations for further studies and in-situ data collection efforts.
Year: 2010