A baroclinic, regional West Florida Shelf model nested in a 1/12 degree North Atlantic HYCOM model, inclusive of tides

A West Florida Shelf (WFS) model based on the Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) is nested in the 1/12° North Atlantic Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (NAT HYCOM). The nesting procedure is based on a flow relaxation scheme, and the model implementation is tested against in situ data over a one-year hindcast simulation. While the focus of NAT HYCOM is the large-scale circulation, the aim of this study is to show that the NAT HYCOM results can be improved by nesting a regional model with increased resolution. Results are compared qualitatively to sea surface height and quantitatively to in situ temperature and velocity measurements on the shelf. The nesting of a regional model improves the performance on the shelf. The inclusion of tides is a new addition, and preliminary results are shown.