Hydrodynamic modeling of Singapore's coastal waters: Nesting and model accuracy

- 2D hydrodynamic models used for Singapore's coastal waters.
- Efficiency of direct nesting or multi-stage nesting.
- Effect of bathymetry and open boundary conditions on model results.
- Harmonic and statistical analysis for checking model performances.
- Inconsistency in different techniques to quantify model accuracy.

The tidal variation in Singapore's coastal waters is influenced by large-scale, complex tidal dynamics (by interaction of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea) as well as monsoon-driven low frequency variations, requiring a model with large spatial coverage. Close to the shores, the complex topography, influenced by headlands and small islands, requires a high resolution model to simulate tidal dynamics. This can be achieved through direct nesting or multi-scale nesting, involving multiple model grids. In this paper, we investigate the effect of grid resolution and multi-scale nesting on the tidal dynamics in Singapore's coastal waters, by comparing model results with observations using different statistical techniques. The results reveal that the intermediate-scale model is generally sufficiently accurate (equal to or better than the most refined model), but also that the most refined model is only more accurate when nested in the intermediate scale model (requiring multi-scale nesting). This latter is the result of the complex tidal dynamics around Singapore, where the dominantly diurnal tidal currents are decoupled from the semi-diurnal water level variations. Furthermore, different techniques to quantify model accuracy (harmonic analysis, basic statistics and more complex statistics) are inconsistent in determining which model is more accurate.