Sea-State-Dependent Momentum Fluxes for Ocean Modeling

Abstract

The impact of wave-dependent surface stress on the ocean circulation has been studied using surface stresses calculated from a numerical wave model. The main questions to be investigated were what the effect would be on the Ekman currents in the upper ocean and what the impact would be on storm surge predictions. To answer the first question, the response of wave-dependent forcing on an Ekman type of model was studied. Here, the wave forcing was provided by a one-gridpoint version of the wave model. Second, the impact of the waves was studied with a three-dimensional ocean circulation model for the North Sea. Three different experiments were performed for a period of 1 yr. To test the effect on the storm surge signal, the results have been compared with sea level observations from 22 stations along the Norwegian and Dutch coasts. One of the main findings is that calculating stresses in the wave model, thereby introducing sea-state-dependent momentum fluxes, has a strong positive impact on the storm surge modeling compared with applying a traditional parameterization of surface stresses from the 10-m wind speed. When all cases with sea level deviation from the mean of less than 0.5 m were removed, the root-mean-square error for 1 yr averaged over all stations was reduced by approximately 6 cm. Splitting the momentum budget into an Eulerian and a wave part (Stokes drift) has only a negligible effect on the modeling of the sea surface elevation but increases the angular turning of the Eulerian surface drift to the right of the wind direction with an angle of about 4°.