Dr Emlyn Jones¹, Dr Mike Herzfeld¹, Mr Farhan Rizwi¹, Dr Nugzar Margvelashvili¹

¹CSIRO, Hobart, Australia

The benefits of predictive capability for a nation’s coastal waters provided by numerical models is clear, and many nations possess operational models capable of resolving the sub-mesoscale, river plume dynamics and water quality. However, Australians oceanic jurisdiction is large, with the third largest EEZ of ~8.2 million square kilometres and a coastline of ~34,000 km, and the challenges posed by such scale have resulted in the current unavailability of such a national coastal modelling system. Global models tailored to the Australian region do exist, but these models do not adequately predict coastal processes. Further, a number of 2D barotropic models cover the Australian EEZ also exist, but these and other 3D models of intermediate resolution O(~4km) struggle to resolve the baroclinic Rossby radius. A patchwork of numerous regional and local area models also exist, but do not provide a coherent picture of Australians marine estate. The computational burden and technical challenges of scale for a model capable of resolving the sub-mesoscale at the national coastal margins is challenging, and to date structured models have failed to provide such a product. Unstructured approaches provide an alternative pathway that is ideally suited to the national modelling problem, and this talk presents the CSIRO progress toward such an unstructured national modelling system. The challenges presented are considered, and progress to date of a number of unstructured approaches are presented.

Biography:

Emlyn Jones is a marine scientist specialising in data assimilation and operational oceanography. He is the Team Leader of the Coastal Hydrodynamic Modelling Team, based in Hobart Tasmania.