Development and Application of the Coupled HYCOM and ADCIRC System

To accurately capture the fluid dynamics present in shallow straits and near-coastal zones, development efforts have centered around enhancing the 3D baroclinic capabilities of the coastal model, ADCIRC. The scale of resolution necessary to resolve shallow straits and coastal zones is not practical with structured global/regional models, such as HYCOM. However, ADCIRC utilizes an unstructured grid, which can capture complicated topography and coastal fluid dynamics. Typically, the barotropic ADCIRC domain encompasses large portions of the ocean; however, in baroclinic simulations, we restrict the domain to the region of interest due to computational demands. Consequentially, the open boundary is placed in an area dominated by complex, nonlinear processes, so proper specification of the open boundary conditions is difficult. Hence, one solution is coupling the offshore conditions provided from HYCOM to the near-coastal model, ADCIRC. This paper examines the coupling protocol needed to interface ADCIRC and HYCOM and provides preliminary results.