Improved Ecosystem Predictions of the California Current System via Accurate Light Calculations
2011
Mobley, Curtis D
The goal of this effort was to incorporate extremely fast but accurate light calculations into coupled physical-biological-optical ocean ecosystem models as used for operational three-dimensional ecosystem predictions. Improvements in light calculations lead to improvements in predictions of chlorophyll concentrations and other water quality parameters (such as visibility), and of upper-ocean thermal structure, relevant to naval needs. In particular, we wanted to imbed the EcoLight-S radiative transfer model in a three-dimensional, time-dependent, coupled physical-biological-optical ecosystem model and then use that coupled model to quantify differences in ecosystem biological and thermal development when using approximate vs. accurate optics. The objective of this year s effort was therefore to further improve the previously developed EcoLight radiative transfer model and incorporate it into a three-dimensional, time-dependent, coupled physical-biological-optical ecosystem model. That coupled model was used to evaluate various strategies for updating the in-water spectral irradiance so as to obtain accurate light predictions while maintaining acceptably fast computation times in fully 3D ecosystem simulations. This year s work centered on the final development of EcoLight-S and imbedding it into the ROMS-CoSiNE code, and then doing studies of the differences in ecosystem predictions of chlorophyll, nutrients, and water heating for various environmental situations.
Show more [+] Less [-]This work was a continuation of the EcoLight development under previous contract N00014-08-C-0024.
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