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Tidal and tidally averaged circulation characteristics of Suisun Bay, California
Author(s) -
Smith Lawrence H.,
Cheng Ralph T.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/wr023i001p00143
Subject(s) - bay , baroclinity , inflow , circulation (fluid dynamics) , estuary , geology , oceanography , estuarine water circulation , bathymetry , flux (metallurgy) , barotropic fluid , advection , environmental science , mechanics , physics , materials science , metallurgy , thermodynamics
Availability of extensive field data permitted realistic calibration and validation of a hydrodynamic model of tidal circulation and salt transport for Suisun Bay, California. Suisun Bay is a partially mixed embayment of northern San Francisco Bay located just seaward of the Sacramento‐San Joaquin Delta. The model employs a variant of an alternating direction implicit finite‐difference method to solve the hydrodynamic equations and an Eulerian‐Lagrangian method to solve the salt transport equation. An upwind formulation of the advective acceleration terms of the momentum equations was employed to avoid oscillations in the tidally averaged velocity field produced by central spatial differencing of these terms. Simulation results of tidal circulation and salt transport demonstrate that tides and the complex bathymetry determine the patterns of tidal velocities and that net changes in the salinity distribution over a few tidal cycles are small despite large changes during each tidal cycle. Computations of tidally averaged circulation suggest that baroclinic and wind effects are important influences on tidally averaged circulation during low freshwater‐inflow conditions. Exclusion of baroclinic effects would lead to overestimation of freshwater inflow by several hundred m 3 /s for a fixed set of model boundary conditions. Likewise, exclusion of wind would cause an underestimation of flux rates between shoals and channels by 70–100%.