Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

Degree Granting Department

Marine Science

Major Professor

Yonggang Liu, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Don Chambers, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Gary Mithcum, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Robert Weisberg, Ph.D.

Keywords

coastal ocean circulation, estuaries, FVCOM, hindcast, hydrodynamics, numerical modeling

Abstract

Florida’s Atlantic coast has abundant resources in beaches, state parks, aquatic preserves, and wildlife refuges as well as densely populated coastal cities in low lying areas that are all subjected to natural disaster threats from the oceans. There is an urgent need for a high-resolution coastal ocean circulation model for this region. Based on the application of the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM), an East Florida Coastal Ocean Model (EFCOM) is developed, downscaling from the deep ocean, across the continental shelf, and into the estuaries. It employs an unstructured grid with horizontal resolution varying from 3 kilometers at the open boundary to 30 meters in the estuaries and 30 sigma layers in the vertical direction. The model is configured for realistic simulation of ocean circulation with surface winds and heat fluxes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Predictions (NCEP) North American Mesoscale (NAM) model, and river inflow data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). On the open boundary, EFCOM is nested within the Global Hybrid Coordinate Model (HYCOM) for 3D velocity, temperature, salinity and sea level with added tides. The hindcast simulation is quantitatively compared with observations of water levels and current velocities from NOAA CO-OP stations. EFCOM simulated hourly total water level has RMSE of 0.07 - 0.19 m and percent error of 3.9% - 8.7% relative to the local tidal amplitudes. The modeled dominant tides have RMSE of 8.9 degrees and 0.02 m for phase and amplitude, respectively. Modeled subtidal water levels capture 72% - 89% of the variance. Modeled M2 tidal currents have phase shifts of less than 12 degrees and magnitude errors less than 30%, except for three stations where the amplitude is underestimated by 40 - 50%. On the shelf, in the southern part of the domain the modeled tidal currents show a degradation in simulation skill, because the tidal currents are relatively very weak compared to the total currents. Overall, the modeled subtidal currents do not compare well with the observations at the limited moored locations, which needs further investigations. The EFCOM can be improved in the future and set up as a daily nowcast/forecast system providing important guidance information for navigation, flooding and inundation associated with storm surges, Harmful Algal Blooms, and Sargassum inundations for this coastal region in the future.

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