1. and Modelling the North Pacific Ocean
Argo Floats
and Modelling the North Pacific Ocean
Michael W. Stacey
Department of Physics
Royal Military College of Canada
Kingston, Ontario, K7K 7B4
15 June 2006

2. Major Collaborators: Jennifer Shore (RMC) Dan Wright (BIO)
Keith Thompson (Dalhousie)
Howard Freeland (IOS)
Bill Crawford (IOS)

3. Motivation
Meteorologists have provided regular weather forecasts for years, using atmospheric observations and numerical models.
Observations of the sub-surface ocean are much harder to make, but oceanographers are now at the stage where they can begin to make comprehensive observations in almost real-time.
These observations are obviously useful in providing better information about the state of the ocean. Also, they provide useful information to scientists studying climate change, since the oceans influence the climate.

4. Basic Requirements 1. Observations - Satellite observations - etc
- Argo Floats
- Satellite observations
- etc
2. Computational Resources
- HPCVL

5. Model simulations of the North Pacific Ocean
Outline
Argo float program
Numerical Model
Spectral Nudging
Model simulations of the North Pacific Ocean
Zoom in on the Northeast Pacific Ocean
Eddy formation and propagation in the NE Pacific
Summary

6. (images from http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/)
Argo Floats
(images from

7. Argo floats record
salinity, temperature
and pressure
Approx $15K/Float,
plus another $15K for
handling and running

8. - Each floats lasts for about 140 cycles, or 4 years.
- Observations can be downloaded from the Argo website free of charge.

9. - Each floats lasts for about 140 cycles, or 4 years.
- Observations can be downloaded from the Argo website free of charge.

11. Approximately 100,000 profiles/yr once 3000 deployed

12. Isopycnals are deepening in the NE Pacific

13. The Model The Model Parallel Ocean Program (POP)
-Finite difference, numerical model, parallelized at Los Alamos, modified at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (Halifax) for the Atlantic Ocean, modified at RMC for the North Pacific Ocean.
-Uses ‘Spectral Nudging’ to prevent drift of the ‘mean’ model fields.
-Run at HPCVL. A single, twenty year simulation takes about 10 days of CPU time, using 20 processors.

14. Vertical Resolution (23 layers):
- Horizontal Resolution: approx. 30 km
Vertical Resolution (23 layers):
Layer Depths (m)
Top 200 m Bottom 4000 m -

15. Spectral Nudging
- Available observations of temperature and salinity are temporally averaged to obtain the observed ‘climatological mean’.
Want the model to have the same ‘mean’ as the observations. Energy for the eddies comes from the energy in the ‘mean’ flow, so need reasonable ‘mean’ in order to get the eddy field right.
Models can be constrained to have the same ‘mean’ as the observations by ‘nudging’ them towards the climatology as the simulation proceeds through time, but because the observed ‘mean’ is ‘smooth’, standard nudging suppresses the formation of eddies in models.
Spectral nudging constrains only the ‘mean’ component of the model to
remain close to the climatology, so eddies can form in the model.

16. Standard Nudging vs. Spectral Nudging
Elevation (cm)
Elevation (cm)
Standard nudging prevents model T and S from drifting away from climatology but suppresses eddy variability.
Spectral nudging constrains the mean T and S fields while keeping higher frequency variations.

17. Sea Surface Height

18. Temperature at 100 m

19. Northeast Pacific (Gulf of Alaska)

20. Sea Surface Height

21. Temperature at 100 m

22. ‘Snapshot’ of the Sea-Surface Temperature off the
Coast of B.C.
Thomson and Gower (1998)
Observation (Thomson & Gower, 1998) Model
- Eddy trains form during the winter.
- The eddies are about 200 km across and at least 500 m deep.
- They propagate towards the west at about 3 km/day.

23. Eddy Sizes and Speeds Size Speed Reference Yelland and Crawford, 2005
(Diameter)
Speed
Reference km
3.0 ± 0.5 km/d
Thomson and Gower, 1998
160 km
2.5 km/d
Crawford et al., 2000 km
1 km/d
Yelland and Crawford, 2005 km
4.4 ± 0.6 km/d
Our results
Yelland and Crawford, 2005

24. Standard Deviation of the sea surface height variability.
Stacey et al (2006)

25. Crawford et al., (2000)

26. Summary - The Argo program has significantly improved
our ability to make observations of the sub-
surface ocean. It is a multi-national program for
which Canada is a significant contributor.
- HPCVL has provided the computational
resources for simulations of the North Pacific
Ocean to take place at RMC.

27. Thank You
References
Crawford, W. R., J. Y. Cherniawsky, and M. G. G. Foreman (2000), Multi-year meanders and eddies in the Alaskan Stream as observed by TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter, Geophys. Res. Letters, 27,
Stacey, M. W., J. Shore, D. G. Wright, and K. R. Thompson (2006), Modeling events of sea-surface variability using spectral nudging in an eddy permitting model of the northeast Pacific Ocean, J Geophys. Res., 111, C06037, doi: /2005JC
Thomson, R. E., and J. F. R. Gower (1998), A basin-scale oceanic instability event in the Gulf of Alaska,. J. Geophys. Res., 103,
Yelland, D., and W. R. Crawford (2005), Currents in Haida Eddies, Deep-Sea Res. II, 52,