A Circulation Model for the Discovery Islands, British Columbia

A finite volume, ocean circulation model was applied to the Discovery Islands region of British Columbia and used to simulate the three-dimensional velocity, temperature and salinity fields required by a companion biological transport model. The circulation model was initialized with a combination of climatological data and recent temperature and salinity observations, and forced with i) winds measured at seventeen weather stations, ii) the discharges from twelve rivers, and iii) five tidal constituents. A simulation for the period 1 April to 28 April 2010 was evaluated using simultaneous observations from three current meter moorings and the harmonics computed from historical measurements at twenty-four tide gauges. Though the model tidal elevations were shown to be in excellent agreement with the observations, profiles of model tidal speed versus depth generally did not capture observed vertical variations as well. Mean and low-pass filtered flow fields, though reasonably accurate near the surface, were also found to deteriorate farther down the water column. However, near-surface, model current harmonics were shown to be in reasonable agreement with those used to produce annual predictions at five sites in the Canadian Tide and Current Tables. Though the winds were not found to be a significant contributor to mean flow fields over the simulation period, tidal rectification was. Numerous residual and transient eddies that may lead to retentive regions in subsequent Lagrangian studies were predicted by the model. Future work and improvements to overcome model deficiencies are briefly outlined.