Fjord to ocean connections

The overall goal of the proposed project is to evaluate whether there ispotential for significant improvement in numerical modelling of near-coastalocean circulation and exchanges of water masses between fjords and theopen ocean. The fundamental difficulty with modelling these exchangeprocesses is the wide range of physical scales involved. Coastal topographyis often complex, particularly along the coast of Norway with fjords connectedto the open ocean via fjord openings and straits that can be much narrowerthan ocean models are able to resolve. The usual approach in modelsystems currently used in coastal management in Norway is to use socalled nested modelling, where fine grid scale models are forced alongopen boundaries with model output from coarser grid scale models. Analternative method is now becoming increasingly in use in the modellingsociety; models with so called unstructured grid. The distance betweenthe computed nodes in the model grid varies according to requirementsfor resolving either topographic features or important physical processes.Here we will compare the two approaches. State-of-the-art model systemsrepresenting the two approaches will be used for modelling the same coastalarea; a part of the Lofoten-Vesterålen archipelago. Model output of flow fieldsand water mass characteristics will be compared between the models andagainst observations, and there will be specific focus on possible implicationsfrom differences in flow field for the drift and spreading of biological matter.