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COMPARING AND LINKING PLUMES ACROSS MODELING APPROACHES
Citation:
FRICK, W. E., Z. GE, T. KHANGAONKAR, AND D. SCHWAB. COMPARING AND LINKING PLUMES ACROSS MODELING APPROACHES. Presented at 2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting, Honolulu, HI, February 20 - 24, 2006.
Impact/Purpose:
A main objective of this task is to combine empirical and physical mechanisms in a model, known as Visual Beach, that
- is user-friendly
- includes point and non-point sources of contamination
- includes the latest bacterial decay mechanisms
- incorporates real-time and web-based ambient and atmospheric and aquatic conditions
- and has a predictive capability of up to three days to help avert potential beach closures.
Description:
River plumes carry many pollutants, including microorganisms, into lakes and the coastal ocean. The physical scales of many stream and river plumes often lie between the scales for mixing zone plume models, such as the EPA Visual Plumes model, and larger-sized grid scales for regional circulation models, such as the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) used to simulate Great Lakes circulation. A potential advantage of the smaller scale models is that they frequently use entrainment theory to simulate the growth of plumes, a technique that has proven useful in simulating turbulent plumes discharged from various channels and structures, some approaching the dimensions of rivers. This study explores the overlap and potential for linkage of some of these models. A comparison of predictions is also presented. Applications for both the Great Lakes (Burns Ditch, near Porter, Indiana) and the coastal ocean are included.