Open AccessA Comparative Study of Vertical Mixing Schemes in Modeling the Bay of Bengal Dynamics
Author(s) -
Tirodkar Siddhesh,
Murtugudde Raghu,
Behera Manasa R.,
Balasubramanian Sridhar
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
earth and space science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.843
H-Index - 23
ISSN - 2333-5084
DOI - 10.1029/2022ea002327
Subject(s) - buoyancy , parametrization (atmospheric modeling) , mixing (physics) , dissipation , mixed layer , flux (metallurgy) , potential temperature , bay , mechanics , geology , water column , ocean dynamics , turbulence , baroclinity , meteorology , climatology , physics , ocean current , thermodynamics , materials science , oceanography , optics , quantum mechanics , metallurgy , radiative transfer
The choice of vertical mixing scheme in ocean models plays an important role in modeling the surface and subsurface circulation and the vertical structure. This work performs a comparative study between K‐profile parametrization (KPP) and k ‐ ϵ mixing schemes for a regional domain in the Bay of Bengal (BoB) using the Modular Ocean Model version 5 (MOM5). It is observed that sea surface temperature (SST) and the mixed layer depth (MLD) show significant improvement with the k ‐ ϵ mixing scheme. Energetic analysis shows that changes in the viscous dissipation and turbulent buoyancy flux are the primary reason for improvement with k ‐ ϵ . The overestimation of viscous dissipation in the KPP scheme is corrected by k ‐ ϵ , resulting in a deeper mixed layer closer to observations. The tendency of buoyancy flux to retain stability in the water column also results in a better representation of SST in k ‐ ϵ . Overall, we conclude that the k ‐ ϵ mixing scheme works better for the BoB region.