Scottish Shelf Model. Part 3: St Magnus Bay Sub-Domain

4 Summary and Conclusions

A 3D hydrodynamic model for the St Magnus Bay ( SMB) area has been developed and calibrated against measured data for the periods of October 2012, May 2009 and October 2001. The calibration runs were driven by boundary conditions taken from the Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters ( PFOW) model, whose boundary condition in turn came from the AMM model. Met forcing was provided by the Met Office and fluvial inputs came from CEH.

The calibration results were compared with measured data from a number of sources. Comparison of water levels, current speed and direction, temperature and salinity were made showing the model has been calibrated adequately. Generally current speeds are low within the bay and sensitivity test during model calibration highlighted the importance of wind, which has an equal influence on current speeds as the tides.

The six month long climatology run (May to October) was driven by boundary conditions from the Shelf Model, fluvial data from CEH G2G and meteorological forcings were from averaging of ECMWF data. Results have been compared with sea surface temperature and salinity climatological data sets and residual currents for the months of May, August and October. These results compared well with the available data. Only weak seasonal variations in sea surface temperature, salinity and residuals were observed over the six months.