Researchers at the Center for Ocean - Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) are exploring the physical environment of the Gulf of Mexico using a high-resolution numerical model. The numerical simulation is an application of the Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM) developed at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. The NCOM is a parallelized three-dimensional primitive equation ocean model that has been optimized for running on the IBM supercomputers at FSU. The model solves for the three-dimensional velocity field, temperature, salinity, and free surface height of the ocean.

The Gulf of Mexico simulation has a horizontal resolution of approximately 5 km with 60 vertical layers (using a hybrid z-coordinate in the deep ocean and a terrain-following, or sigma, coordinate in the top 100 m). The domain extends to the coastline, with a minimum ocean depth of 4 meters. The model employs a quasi-third-order upwind advection scheme for momentum and scalar fields, which permits improved simulation of fronts in the ocean.

The Gulf of Mexico simulation is forced by winds, heat flux, evaporation and precipitation, fresh water inflow from 30 rivers, and flow through the open boundary in the Caribbean Sea. Different experiments can be performed by changing various forcing functions, numerical parameters, or the domain configuration. For example, high-resolution high frequency wind fields derived from satellite scatterometer data are used to study the ocean's response to the hurricanes of 1999 and 2000.

The NCOM simulations serve as a virtual laboratory for studying the physics of the ocean circulation within the Gulf of Mexico. Projects include studies of the Loop Current and its eddies within the deep ocean, the circulation on the continental shelves near the coast, the interaction of eddies with the waters of the continental shelves, and the effects of river discharge on the ocean environment. Additionally, the model is being used for studies to advance our understanding of numerical methods, ocean prediction systems, and air-sea interaction.