BIOWAVE: Surface wave effects in the upper ocean and concequences for biological modeling

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The Norwegian Meteorological Institute (met.no) and the Institute for Marine Research (IMR) have a national responsibility for providing information on weather, ocean currents and sea state for planning and protection of the environment, and to give advic e to Norwegian authorities on aquaculture and the ecosystems of the Norwegian waters. Ecosystem models are used by met.no and IMR to model, explore and monitor phytoplankton dynamics, zooplankton, fish eggs and larval growth, transport and spreading. Thes e models are our key tools to study productivity in the ecosystems and, particularly, recruitment to the fish stocks. Moreover, such models are necessary tools for assessing the vulnerability of marine plankton, hereunder fish eggs and larvae, to floating and dispersed pollutants. Our main objective is to improve the operational system for forecasting and monitoring of fish egg and larvae transport. We propose a research project for improving the mixed-layer dynamics of the numerical circulation models a s applied for the physical forcing in ecosystem models. We will include wave-induced fluxes of momentum and energy, which gives a more realistic description of the ocean currents and turbulent mixing in the upper layer of the ocean. The wave-induced fluxe s will be implemented in the ocean circulation model using the theoretical framework of Broström et al. (J. Phys. Oceangr., 2008). The operational wave prediction model at met.no will produce the necessary forcing fields for the ocean circulation model, a nd hence the wave model will act as a link between the atmosphere and ocean models. The ocean circulation model will subsequently deliver improved physical forcing fields for the operational ecosystem models used by IMR. An extensive field campaign for t he purpose of model verification is planned for the waters off Lofoten and Vesterålen. This is the core region for cod spawning in Norway.