A regional ocean model of the Canadian Pacific Coast

Diane Masson and Isaac Fine
Institute of Ocean Sciences
Sidney BC, Canada

A high resolution (3 km) application of the Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) has been implemented for the Canadian Pacific Coast. The model domain extends from the Columbia River to the southern Alaskan Coast. It is driven by atmospheric forcing provided alternatively by the CORE (Coordinated Ocean Reference Experiment) as well as the NARR (North American Regional Reanalysis) datasets. Lateral boundary conditions have been implemented to simulate realistic tides as well as the variability of the water properties both from monthly Levitus climatology or from the output of a larger North-East Pacific ROMS implementation (NEP4-Globec). A series of 8 year (1997-2004) numerical simulations have been performed to examine the seasonal and the year to year variability of the coastal ocean as well as the sensibility of the results to the various forcing types. Special attention has been given to the simulation of certain ubiquitous features such as: seasonal reversal of the shelf break current, seasonal changes in the mixed layer depth, upwelling and downwelling transitions in the spring and in the fall, and buoyancy-driven coastal currents.