Abstract
A high-resolution coastal ocean model was developed to simulate the temporal/spatial variability of the Kennebec–Androscoggin (K–A) river plume and the circulation in Casco Bay. The model results agree favorably with the moored and shipboard observations of velocity, temperature, and salinity. The surface salinity gradient was used to distinguish the plume from the ambient coastal water. The calculated plume thickness suggests that the K–A plume is surface trapped. Its horizontal scales correlate well with Q 0.25, where Q is the volume discharge of the rivers. Directional spreading is affected by the wind with the upwelling favorable wind transporting the plume water offshore. Both the wind and the tide also enhance mixing in the plume. The inclusion of a wetting-and-drying (WAD) scheme appears to enhance the mixing and entrainment processes near the estuary. The plume becomes thicker near the mouth of the estuary, the outflow velocity of the plume is weaker, and the radius of the river plume shrinks. The flow field in the model run with the WAD is noisier, not only in shallow areas of Casco Bay but also in the plume and even on the shelf. We speculate that the WAD processes can affect much larger areas than the intertidal zones, especially via a river plume that feeds into a coastal current.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Joseph Salisbury of the Coastal Ocean Observing Center at the University of New Hampshire, Dr. Neal Pettigrew, and the GoMOOS buoy group for providing the cruise and mooring data used in this study. Two anonymous reviewers provided many valuable comments and suggestions, and their efforts are gratefully acknowledged. This study was supported by subcontracts of NASA Grant NNX08AC27G and NOAA Grant NA04NOS4780271 to the University of Maine.
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Xue, H., Du, Y. Implementation of a wetting-and-drying model in simulating the Kennebec–Androscoggin plume and the circulation in Casco Bay. Ocean Dynamics 60, 341–357 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-010-0269-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-010-0269-3