Simulations of Hydrophysical Fields with High Spatial Resolution over the Northwestern Shelf of the Black Sea

Abstract

Two numerical experiments on reconstructing velocity fields, sea level, temperature, and salinity were conducted with account for real atmospheric forcing in autumn 2007 using the Marine Hydrophysical Institute (MHI) hydrodynamic model with an open boundary (northwestern shelf) adjusted to the coastal region of the Black Sea. A high spatial resolution of 500 m and 1.6 km was used, while the bottom topography had a resolution of ~1.6 km. The higher spatial resolution made it possible to reconstruct detailed mesoscale and submesoscale structures of the hydrophysical fields in the upper and deep layers over the northwestern shelf and to obtain quantitative and qualitative characteristics of eddies and jets that are more accurate compared to previous calculations. It was shown that improvement of the spatial resolution up to a few hundred meters makes it possible to take into account the detailed bottom topography and shape of the coastline in the numerical model, which in turn yields a more accurate quantitative and qualitative reconstruction of the mesoscale and submesoscale properties of coastal circulation.