AusTEN National Tidal model data

Brief description

The collection includes output from an Australian national implementation of CSIRO's un-structured COMPAS hydrodynamic model to assess the Australian national tidal energy resource. The CSIRO COMPAS model was run in 2-D (depth-averaged) mode on an unstructured grid having 183810 cells covering much of Australia's continental shelf and margin. Cell resolution is weighted, with higher resolution in regions with high tidal velocity and nearer to the coast, and is as fine as 500m in places, allowing the near-coastal flows to be simulated, but not the details of individual ports or narrow passages. The model was nested within the Oregon State University Tidal Prediction System (OTPS) 1/6degree global tidal model tpxo9v1 produced by Erofeeva et al (2002). During a calibration/validation phase, the model was run for 15 days using a variety of parameters and evaluated against a database of 683 sea level sites and 95 current velocity sites.

The collection includes three files:
COMPAS_out66_AUSTEn.nc - includes hourly output of surface elevation (eta) and depth-averaged velocity components (uav, vav) on the unstructured mesh for the period of the simulation. This is 59 days 25/2/2017-24/4/2017.
CSIRO_tidal_const_v10_beta.nc - includes elevation and velocity tidal constituents for 11 constituents (Q1, O1, K1, 2N2, N2, M2, S2, M4, MS4, M6, 2MS6), as derived using the t_tide package in MATLAB (Pawlowicz, 2002). This is derived from 222 days 25/2/2017 to 25/10/2017.
Aust_current_meter_tidal_cnstits_v1.nc has tidal constituents of the depth-averaged current velocity observed at 95 locations around Australia. It was used for evaluating the barotropic tidal model of Griffin, Herzfeld and Hemer (2020). See also CSIRO_tidal_const_v9.nc.

This dataset is not certified as being fit for navigation purposes. Anyone using it for navigation purposes does so entirely at their own risk. The data set has known as well as unknown errors, largely due to idealizations embodied in the model configuration. Factors limiting model accuracy include the spatial resolution, lack of stratification, bathymetry errors, simple parameterization of bottom friction, absence of within-domain tidal body forcing and lack of non-linear interactions with non-tidal flows.
Lineage: Data from the COMPAS hydrodynamic model (filtered for relevant variables for this tidal model); tidal constituents derived from COMPAS output using tidal analysis in MATLAB.