Villy Kourafalou and Roland Balotro, RSMAS/Univ. of Miami, Alan Wallcraft, Naval Research Lab.
An inter-annual simulation covering the period from September 1999 to December 2002 has been completed with the South Florida HYCOM, nested within the North Atlantic HYCOM. The atmospheric forcing is adopted from the NOGAPS 3-6 hourly fluxes and wind interpolated over the domain. Some coastal features of the model are enhanced by including climatological river inputs, distributed over a line source. Model computed salinities around Florida Bay are compared to observations. The inter-annual variability in wet and dry seasons is discussed.