Open boundary conditions for regional tidal simulations

The performance of regional tide model simulations is examined in relation to the choice of open boundary conditions. Three barotropic open boundary conditions, clamped elevation, clamped normal velocity, and Flather, give similar results when the prescribed values are exact; however, Flather is much less sensitive to errors in the prescribed values. Of particular concern, it was found that with a phase error between the two boundaries, both the clamped conditions resulted in magnitude errors in the unclamped variable (although the simulation remained stable).A modified flow relaxation scheme for the depth-varying prognostic variables is presented. This implementation allows the transmission of a range of vertical modes while retaining realistic topography at the boundary. It was found to be an excellent internal tide boundary condition in tests comparing simulations of different domain length encompassing a ridge and sloping bottom, and in a comparison to an analytical solution. Mass is conserved without any artificial volume constraint.