RSMAS/MPO Coastal and Shelf Modeling

Caption: Snapshots showing temperature and current vectors in the Bahamas model revealing the influence of the tide on the Bahamas shallow banks (for instance south and west of Andros...).

The model domain is centered on the Bahamas Islands, and extends from the Abaccos to the south of Turk and Caicos. It resolves the transport through the Windward Passage, the Florida Strait, the Old Bahama Channel and the Northwest Providence Channel. On-line nested zooms are set-up on demand based on the focus of the study. Model output will be made available on-line through a thredds server.

RESOLUTION:

The horizontal resolution is 5 km and the minimum depth is 8m. The model has 25 vertical layers.

NESTED: Yes

OUTER MODELS:

This is an off-line in Atlantic HYCOM.

FORCING:

Monthly varying surface fluxes from the Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Dataset (http://icoads.noaa.gov/) (COADS) climatology. Wind stress were obtained from QuikSCAT scatterometer (http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/PRODUCTS/p109.html).

Tides were set at the boundaries by the TPXO6 global tide model (http://www.esr.org/polar_tide_models/Model_TPXO62_load.html).

APPLICATIONS:

• Bahamas Biocomplexity Project
• Connectivity patterns and dispersal kernels for coral reefs organisms
• Marine protected areas connectivity
• Marine sponges population dynamics and connectivity under harvest pressure
• Lobster larvae connectivity in the Turk and Caicos

CONTACT:

Laurent Cherubin — lcherubin@rsmas.miami.edu
Claire Paris — cparis@rsmas.miami.edu