A Coupled OpenFOAM-WRF Study on Atmosphere-Wave-Ocean Interaction

15th OpenFOAM Workshop Arlington, VA USA, 22 – 25 June 2020

A Coupled OpenFOAM-WRF Study on Atmosphere-Wave-Ocean Interaction

J. Gilbert-1 and J. Pitt-1,2 1-Hume Center for National Security and Technology, 2-Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

It is well-known that the upper ocean is a dominant influence on the structure of the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer (MABL). However, current understanding of atmosphere-ocean interactions is incomplete. The overall objective of this effort is to investigate the air-sea coupling processes and their relative impact on the structure of the MABL using a coupled, multiscale atmospheric-wave-ocean model. In this work, a microscale model of the ocean mixed layer is implemented in OpenFOAM and coupled to a mesoscale model of the MABL implemented in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, an open source mesoscale numerical weather prediction (NWP) code. Unlike previous OpenFOAM-WRF coupling efforts which used WRF mesoscale predictions to set inflow conditions for the microscale OpenFOAM domain, this work uses OpenFOAM predictions as boundary conditions to the WRF model to study microscale-to-mesoscale effects. This work will present details on the implementation of the proposed OpenFOAM-WRF coupling approach, as well as numerical experiments with and without coupling to the OpenFOAM ocean model.

It is well-known that the upper ocean is a dominant influence on the structure of the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer (MABL). However, current understanding of atmosphere-ocean interactions is incomplete. The overall objective of this effort is to investigate the air-sea coupling processes and their relative impact on the structure of the MABL using a coupled, multiscale atmospheric-wave-ocean model. In this work, a microscale model of the ocean mixed layer is implemented in OpenFOAM and coupled to a mesoscale model of the MABL implemented in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, an open source mesoscale numerical weather prediction (NWP) code. Unlike previous OpenFOAM-WRF coupling efforts which used WRF mesoscale predictions to set inflow conditions for the microscale OpenFOAM domain, this work uses OpenFOAM predictions as boundary conditions to the WRF model to study microscale-to-mesoscale effects. This work will present details on the implementation of the proposed OpenFOAM-WRF coupling approach, as well as numerical experiments with and without coupling to the OpenFOAM ocean model.