CICEET Progress Report for the period 3/15/05 Through 9/15/05

Project Title: A community model for the Chesapeake Bay
Principal Investigator(s): Ming Li
Additional Investigator(s): Raleigh R. Hood and William C. Boicourt.
Project Start Date: 09/01/2002

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Tasks to meet objectives
To meet this objective, we plan to (1) further improve the water quality model, analyze the model results over years of variable climatic forcing conditions and under different nutrient management scenarios, and (2) present the model results to the scientific and management communities in the Chesapeake Bay region.

Progress on Tasks
We have made significant progress on both tasks. We have completed hindcast simulations of the Chesapeake Bay for the period between 1995 and 2000, covering highly variable climatic forcing conditions. We have designed a website for disseminating the model results to the community. Please visit www.ocean.hpl.umces.edu for details. The website includes model description and validation, outputs from hindcast simulations, animations of model simulations and code downloads. We presented the website to the NERR managers in Maryland and obtained very positive feedbacks. We agreed that the website is the most effective and convenient way to communicate and distribute our model results to the management community. To communicate our results to the scientific community, we have focused on publishing papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Accomplishments
One paper (Li et al., 2005) has been accepted for publication at the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans. We have compared our model results against high-resolution three-dimensional hydrographic measurements and time-series measurements of sea level, salinity and subtidal current at a number of monitoring stations in the Chesapeake Bay. This paper provides the first comprehensive evaluation of a hydrodynamic model for the Chesapeake Bay and demonstrates that our model has high predictive skills.

Second paper (Zhong and Li, 2005) has been submitted to Continental Shelf Research. This paper demonstrates that our model has excellent skills in predicting sea levels and tidal currents in the Chesapeake Bay. Several other papers are in preparation and will hopefully be submitted by the time we submit our final report by November, 2005.

Difficulties
None.

Project Objectives for Next Reporting Period

Overall Project Timeline Update
We plan to submit our final report within 3 months of the project end time, i.e. before November 30, 2005.

Preliminary Data
Besides evaluating model results on seasonal and interannual time scales, we have tested the model’s predictive capability under extreme forcing conditions. A good test was provided by an event in September, 2003 when Hurricane Isabel stroke the Chesapeake Bay. Hurricane Isabel made landfall over the Outer Banks of North Carolina and moved to the west of Chesapeake Bay, creating widespread flooding. The Isabel surge reached a maximum of 2.7 m above normal high tide in Washington, DC, 2.2 m in Baltimore and 2.0 m in Annapolis, causing significant damages in these population centers. In addition, Hurricane Isabel generated strong currents in the Bay and caused destratification in the water column. We have coupled our hydrodynamic model with a regional atmospheric model developed at Dept. of Meteorology, University of Maryland at College Park. The following figures present some results from the coupled atmosphere-ocean model simulations of Hurricane Isabel.

Dissemination
Publications:
Li, M., L. Zhong and W.C. Boicourt. 2005. ROMS simulations of the Chesapeake Bay estuary: sensitivity to turbulence mixing parameterization and comparison with hydrographic observations. Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, in press.

L. Zhong and M. Li. 2005. Tidal energy fluxes and dissipation in the Chesapeake Bay. Continental Shelf Research, submitted.

Contact with End Users:
We had met with NERR managers to discuss model results and website design.

Expenditures
Each institution’s grants office is responsible for submitting financial reports. Please state whether or not expenditures are in the range anticipated for the work accomplished to date.

Yes.