Interaction of the surface semidiurnal tides in the Barents and Kara Seas

Abstract

A purpose of the work is to study the interaction between surface semidiurnal tides in the system of the Barents and Kara Seas. Using the 3D finite-element hydrostatic model QUODDY-4, we have carried out two numerical experiments. In the first of them it is assumed that the tides in the Barents and Kara Seas are free to interact with each other, whereas in the second one it is supposed that there is no interaction of tides in these seas (an impervious rigid wall, that prevents a horizontal wave flux of barotropic tidal energy between the seas, is placed here). It is shown that the tidal interaction does not lead to a qualitative reorganization of their spatial structure, although its quantitative changes are noticeable. An interaction domain covers the north-eastern part of the Barents Sea only, while outside this domain the averaged (over a tidal cycle) rms absolute vector difference between the tidal sea elevations obtained with and without tidal interaction is almost everywhere less than the corresponding error of the tidal predictions, thereby indicating that it lies in the model noise.