The following is a partial list of ongoing and completed projects

• Gulf of Mexico Ocean Monitoring System
• Gulf of Mexico Hurricane Hindcast
• Gulf of Mexico Hindcast
• Hydrographic Atlas for the Eastern Continental Shelf of North America
• Eastern Continental Shelf Hindcast
• South China Sea Monsoon/Typhoon Hindcast
• New York Bight Sludge Transport Model
• Juan de Fuca Nowcast/Forecast Model
• Southern California Bight Hindcast

Gulf of Mexico

 

Dynalysis Gulf of Mexico Forecast System

Dynalysis of Princeton has been producing forecasts for the Gulf of Mexico since September of 1998.  The initial forecast system was implemented by Dynalysis as an industry partner in a National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP).  This project was called a Gulf of Mexico Ocean Monitoring System.  The objectives of the project were to integrate existing data acquisition and analysis methods to provide sufficient information to produce a nowcast/forecast of the currents and other ocean properties for the Gulf of Mexico and to make the results available to the oceanographic community in real-time.

A list of participants in the OMS project and the annual report is available for viewing.

 

Support for the present version of the model, PDOM-A, is being provided by the Naval Oceanographic Office as part of the Northern Gulf of Mexico Littoral Initiative (NGLI).  This whole gulf model is being used to support regional modeling of the coastal waterways.

 

The PDOM-A forecast model, not only uses synoptic forcing to describe environmental conditions, but assimilates derived temperatures and salinity that have been determined from satellite measurements of the sea surface height and surface temperatures.  The data that are being assimilated are made available to the oceanographic community by the Naval Research Laboratory as part of the Modular Ocean Data Assimilation System (MODAS).  

 

The meteorological conditions used to make the Gulf forecasts are from the Navy's Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS).  COAMPS is a state-of-the-art meteorological model developed at the Naval Research Laboratory Monterey, CA and is run operationally at Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center.   For the Gulf of Mexico, 48-hour COAMPS forecasts are provided twice daily.   

 

Real-time river conditions used during the Gulf forecasts are from the USGS/COE gauges along the Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida coastlines.

 

Two types are forecasts are made.

• Two nowcast/forecasts for the Gulf of Mexico are made based on the availability of COAMPS meteorological forecast.  Each forecast is for 48 hours.

• Once a week, a 30-day long range forecast is made.  This forecast begins with the latest nowcast and continues for 30 days.  During this time climatological environmental conditions are imposed.

View the nowcast/forecast.

View the long range forecast.

Amoco / Dynalysis Hurricane Hindcast

This is  project was a collaborative effort between Amoco Corporation and Dynalysis of Princeton.  The project is called GUMCurrent, which was a model hindcast of currents and elevations during 106 of the most severe storms in the Gulf of Mexico.   The winds and atmospheric pressures which provide the basis for the atmospheric conditions was produced by Oceanweather, Inc. as a component of a project sponsored by a consortium of oil companies called GUMSHOE and GUMSHOE2.

The currents and elevations are available to support Ocean Engineering projects and other offshore activities.  For purchase email us at mail@dynalysis.com.

Examples of the oceanographic response for several hurricanes  are provided for you as

• images or as a
• movie.

       Gulf of Mexico Hindcast

The research effort used to develop and implement the Gulf of Mexico model used in the OMS and GUMCurrent projects was model used supported by the Minerals Management Service (MMS).  The project began in 1992 to model the Gulf of Mexico, with special emphasis on the Louisiana-Texas shelf.  Because of the agency's operational needs, the Gulf of Mexico was selected as the test-bed for enhancing the capabilities of Coastal Ocean Models. Thus, the MMS supported both the Dynalysis modeling program and a comprehensive observation program on the Louisiana and Texas shelves, called LATEX. The objective of the Dynalysis research program was to contribute to the MMS's ability to predict the motion of oil spills.  The approach used by Dynalysis  combined the application of both statistical and numerical methods.

During the course of the project, over 150 years of Gulf of Mexico simulations were completed.  Simulations were made with both climatological inputs and synoptic inputs, i.e., winds and river inflow.  As an example of the morphology of the Loop Current and Loop Current Eddies,

You can view a movie created for three-years of a ten-year model simulation with climatological inputs.

As well as develop the model, Dynalysis using all available information, produced a detailed bathymetry, and monthly climatological atlas of the salinity and temperature for the Gulf. 

View atlas of salinity/temperature and bathymetry for the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Eastern Continental Shelf of North America

 

Hydrographic Atlas for the Eastern Continental Shelf of North America

 

A hydrographic climatological atlas of temperature and salinity has been prepared on a 10'x10' grid covering the Eastern Continental Shelf of North America from 22.5°N to 62°N. The mean, standard deviation and data density have been calculated using a radius of influence technique. The data used in the analysis are hydrographic casts from the archives of NODC, the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, and NAVOCEANO. The atlas was prepared for the Strategic Environmental Assessment Division Office of Ocean Resources Conservation and Assessment at NOAA/NOS.

View atlas of salinity/temperature and bathymetry for the Eastern Continental Shelf.

Eastern Continental Shelf Hindcast

A three-dimensional ocean circulation model was applied to the United States Atlantic Continental shelf to obtain a detailed description of the temporal and spatial structure of the water levels, currents, temperature and salinity. An important feature in this region is the Gulf Stream, which meanders and sheds eddies north and south of the Stream.   In addition to predicting the currents for a 15-year hindcast, a tidal analysis was prepared for the region.  This project was supported by the MMS.

 

South China Sea

 

South China Sea Monsoon/Typhoon Hindcast

 

The winds and tides have a strong effect on the currents and mixing in the South China Sea and the shelves surrounding Borneo and Malaysia.  The prevailing winds are monsoonal in character and are strong and steady, southwesterly during summer and northeasterly during winter.  These strong reversing winds greatly influence the magnitude and direction of the prevailing currents in the region.  Strong tidal forcing on the broad and shallow shelf adds a substantial component to the currents that is felt throughout the water column.  The prevailing large scale circulation in the South China Sea also influences the circulation of the surrounding shelves.  All of these phenomena need to be properly modeled to determine the currents, the density structure and hence, the mixing and shear in the water column.

 

Dynalysis was funded by the gas and oil industry to provide a climatological description of the spatial structure of the three-dimensional currents; prepare a tidal atlas; and predict the circulation during the northeast monsoon and for typhoons occurring in the late spring, early summer and in the late fall.  The winds and atmospheric pressures which provide the basis for the atmospheric conditions was produced by Oceanweather, Inc. as a component of a project sponsored by a consortium of oil companies called SEAMOS.

An example of a hindcast for a typhoon are provided for you as

• images or as a
• movie.

 

New York Bight

 

New York Bight Sludge Transport Model

 

This study was one component of a comprehensive NOAA/EPA program to study the fate of material disposed at the 106-Mile dumpsite. This research program entailed the development of a Far-Field Fate (F³) model. The F³ model is a fully 3-dimensional prognostic model that predicts the time dependent distribution of a constituent mass released into the water column. The F³ model is embedded in the Dynalysis-Princeton Ocean Model and solves the prognostic transport equation for each constituent, which comprises the total mass released. In the F³ model a flux-corrected numerical scheme was developed to ensure a mass balance of the time dependent mass released into the water column and a stable, positive constituent distribution. The total mass is portioned into a number of constituents by density, each with a corresponding settling velocity. There may be multiple sources of mass in the F³ model and the boundary conditions employed are that outward flux at both the bottom and at lateral boundaries are removed from the system and no inward flux is allowed through these boundaries.

 

Juan de Fuca System

 

Juan de Fuca Nowcast/Forecast Model

 

The Strait of Juan de Fuca, San Juan Islands, Puget Sound, and Strait of Georgia, designated as the Juan De Fuca System, are highly trafficked with large vessels containing oil. Much of this transportation of oil originates from Vancouver Harbor. The currents in this region, especially in the San Juan Island can be extremely hazardous. To address concerns of local environmental groups in Vancouver harbor, ESSO Resources of Canada Limited supported our effort in developing a model for the region. An integral component of this modeling system was the near real-time requirement to be provide three-dimensional currents to be assimilated by a comprehensive oil spill model. Thus, the model had to be configured to assimilate the appropriate environmental conditions, easy to operate, and produce information in a timely and efficient manner. All these requirements were met at the conclusion of the project.

 

View an atlas of the climatological monthly hydrography and a typical tidal cycle  for Juan de Fuca and Vancouver Harbor

You can also view the typical tidal cycle of elevations and currents as a

• movie.

Southern California Bight

 

Southern California Bight Hindcast

The Minerals Management Service supported a research effort to implement a model for the region, including the Santa Barbara Channel.  The model was used to predict a series of synoptic and climatological simulations and compared to observations to obtain a quantitative assessment of model results.

As component of the projects was the development of a monthly climatological atlas for the region.  The data used in the analysis were obtained from several sources. Data provided by the NODC were the high resolution conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) archives (F022), the station data (SD), the expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data and the mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) data, for all years through 1989. Additional data from the U. S. Navy Fleet Numerical Oceanographic Data Center (FNOC) archives in the Master Oceanographic Observation Data Set, release 4 (MOODS4) were acquired from the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO). Data were also solicited from individual principal investigators so that all of the hydrographic data from the California Cooperative Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI), the Minerals Management Service/Central California Coastal Circulation Study (C4S) and the MMS/Santa Barbara Channel Circulation Model And Field Study (SBC) are included.

View atlas of salinity/temperature and bathymetry for the Southern California Bight.