The NCOF Partners are:
Coastal Seas Model Description
Atlantic Margin Model (AMM)
The operational Shelf Seas model is a three-dimensional model capable of representing the effects of temperature and salinity and able to resolve vertical current structure both on the shelf and at the shelf break and beyond. The model was written by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL), Birkenhead and has been tested by them in many different configurations. It has been running operationally at the Met Office, in one form or another, since June 2000.
The Model is a 12 km (1/9°x1/6°) resolution implementation of the POLCOMS physical model (Holt and James, 2001), extending from approximately 40° N to 65° N and 20° W to 13° E, covering the north-west European continental shelf and much of the shelf break to the west of the British Isles. The model uses an Arakawa B grid in the horizontal and has a hybrid s-level coordinate representation in the vertical (with approximately 33 levels).
The model is forced both at the surface and at the open ocean boundaries. The atmospheric forcing is by wind stress, sea surface pressure, heat and precipitation minus evaoration. These fluxes are taken from numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.
At the open boundaries to the Atlantic, forcing is provided by a larger scale circulation taken from the Forecasting Ocean Assimilation Model (FOAM). As of Autumn 2008 the model will start taking it’s boundaries from the 1/4° Global ORCA025 NEMO FOAM. A radiative condition is also applied at the open boundaries, allowing outflow and inhibiting reflection back into the model domain.
In addition to this, the Shelf Seas Atlantic Margin Model also includes over 300 rivers and other sources of freshwater inflow including the Baltic Sea.
For a detailed description of the POLCOMS model, visit the POLCOMS homepage.
Medium Resolution Continental Shelf Model (MRCS)
The MRCS (Medium-Resolution Continental Shelf) model is a coupled hydrodynamic-ecosystem model, nested within the Atlantic Margin Model. The hydrodynamics are supplied by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory Coastal Ocean Modelling System (POLCOMS) and the ecosystem component is supplied by the European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (ERSEM), developed at Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML). Details of the ecosystems modelling are presented in the Ecosystems pages.
The model is located on north-west European continental shelf, ranging from 12° W to 13° E and 48° N to 62° N, as shown in the figure below. It has a 'moveable open boundary' which follows the 200 m depth contour around most of domain. The resolution is approximately 6 km in the horizontal and there are 18 S-coordinate levels in the vertical. Also shown in the figure are those sites at which the model is being validated against observational data. Further details of the model validation can be found on the Model Validation page.
Other Model Grids
The Irish Sea
The Irish Sea model is nested into the Atlantic Margin model. It runs at a resolution of approximately 1 nautical mile (1/60th of a degree by 1/40th of a degree) from 51°N to 56°N and from 7.0°W to 2.7°W with 18 vertical levels and has been operational at the Met Office since March 2003.
The Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf model covers the whole of the Gulf region at a resolution of 12km, with 20 sigma levels. It includes freshwater inflow from the Shatt-al-Arab river and implements hourly wind and pressure forcing from the NWP global model. The open sea boundary is forced with temperature and salinity profiles from climatology, as well as tidal information. This version of the model has been operational since October 2001.
References
References
Holt, J.T. and James, I.D. (2001). An s coordinate density evolving model of the northwest European continental shelf: 1, Model description and density structure. Journal of Geophysical Research, 106, 14,015–14,034.
Holt, M., Li Z. and Osborne J. (2003). Real-time forecast modelling for the NW European Shelf Seas. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on EuroGOOS, 2002, Athens, Greece, 484-489.
Holt, M W 2003 Towards NOOS – the EuroGOOS NW Shelf task team 1996-2002 in Dahlin, H., N.C. Flemming, K. Nittis, and S.E. Petersson (eds.) (2003). Building the European Capacity in Operational Oceanography, Proceedings of 3rd EuroGOOS Conference, Elsevier Oceanography Series. pp 461- 465
Siddorn, J.R., Allen, J.I., Blackford, J.C., Gilbert, F.J., Holt, J.T., Holt, M.W., Osborne, J.P., Proctor R. and Mills, D.K. (2006). Modelling the hydrodynamics and ecosystem of the North-West European continental shelf for operational oceanography. Journal of Marine Systems, doi:10.1016/j.jmarsys.2006.08.001.
(Last Updated: 27-10-2008)