Evaluation of open sea boundary conditions for the coastal zone. A model study in the northern part of the Baltic Proper.

Type: Report
Series: RO 55
Author: réne Wåhlström, Kari Eilola, Moa Edman, Elin Almroth-Rosell
Published:

Summary

The environmental conditions in the coastal zone are strongly connected with the conditions in the open sea as the transports across the boundaries are extensive. Therefore, it is of critical importance that coastal zone models have lateral boundary forcing of high quality and required parameters with good coverage in space and time.

The Swedish Coastal zone Model (SCM) is developed at SMHI to calculate water quality in the coastal zone. This model is currently forced by the outcome from a one-dimensional model, assimilated to observations along the coast. However, these observations are scarce both in space, time and do usually not include all required parameters. In addition, the variability closer to the coast may be underestimated by the open sea monitoring stations used for the data assimilation. These problems are partly overcome by utilize the one-dimensional model that resolves all the variables used in the SCM. However, the method is not applicable for examine either the past period or future scenario where the latter analyze how climate change might affect the coastal zone. In the present study, we therefore evaluate the possibility to use results from a three-dimensional coupled physical and biogeochemical model of the Baltic Sea as open sea boundary conditions for the coastal zone, primarily to investigate the two periods mentioned above.

Seven sensitivity experiments have been carried out in a pilot area of the coastal zone, the northern part of the Baltic proper, including the Stockholm Archipelago. The sensitivity tests were performed in order to explore methods to extract the outcome from the three-dimensional model, RCO-SCOBI, and apply as lateral boundary forcing for the SCM. RCO-SCOBI is a model for the open Baltic Sea with high horizontal and vertical resolution of the required variables. The results from the different tests were examined and evaluated against observations in the coastal zone. This was executed for both the physical and the biogeochemical variables utilizing a statistical method.

The results from this study concluded that the outcome from the RCO-SCOBI is applicable as forcing files for the SCM. The best results in the tests was obtained with a method extracting depth profiles for the required variables from the RCO-SCOBI at a position 10 nautical miles to the east and 10 nautical miles to the south in the Baltic proper or north in the Gulf of Bothnia outside each of the outer basins.