Tidal changes in the regional climate of the Kara Sea: results of modeling

Kagan B.A., Sofina E.V.

A problem on assessing tidal changes in regional climates of limited marine systems using the Kara Sea as an example is solved. The basin for solving this problem is the three-dimensional finite-elements hydrostatic model QUODDY-4. Applying this model, we carried out two numerical experiments. In one of them the external forcing is prescribed as total (wind + thermohaline + tidal), in the second it shows up as combined total (wind + thermohaline). It is established that the fields of seawater temperature and salinity at the depth of the pycnocline base and sea surface level correlate well with observations: the correlations between them are 0.681, 0.493 and 0.678 respectively. If the tidal changes in the above climate variables are determined as differences between these variables for total and combined forcings, we concluded that tidal hanges in temperature and sea surface level turn out to be commensurable with the merely variables, and the tidal changes in salinity is an order of magnitude less than this variable. In other words, the tidal changes in seawater temperature and sea surface level contribute significantly to the formation of these variables, while the tidal changes in salinity is measurable.

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