Dissection of the GHER turbulence closure scheme

In this paper, the turbulence closure scheme implemented in the GHER hydrodynamic model is described in detail. Two case studies carried out in two contrasting conditions—one in the shallow, tide dominated, north-western European continental shelf, and the other in the deep Mediterranean Sea—are used to identify the dominant terms of the equation for the turbulent kinetic energy, first theoretically, secondly from the results of the simulations. In both domains, the dominant terms are the local destruction and production terms, the vertical diffusion term and to a smaller degree, the time derivative. Advection and horizontal diffusion turn out to be negligible in most of the relevant cases for such large scale studies. This opens the way to simplifications and optimisations of the numerical models.