The International Journal of Ocean and Climate Systems

Editors: Dr. M.C. Deo and Dr. Wenrui Huang
published quarterly • ISSN 1759-3131
Volume 1 to be published quarterly, Number 1 in March 2010

Aim and Scope of the Journal
The International Journal of Ocean and Climate Systems is a peer-reviewed Journal whose aim is to provide visibility to research in ocean science and technology with focus on systems approach in general. Works involving the use of system techniques to understand ocean processes, to develop ocean resources and facilities and also to describe changes in ocean climate and their impact on human activities are particularly welcome.

Increasing activities are expected to be carried out in the oceans in future to meet ever growing requirements of fisheries, fresh water, electric power, communication, mineral extraction and additional space for habitation. Innovative planning, design, operation and maintenance of facilities that provide these resources more optimally will therefore continue to assume importance in future. A cost effective desalination technology, an efficient extraction of electricity from unobstructed ocean wind, waves, tides and currents, thermal gradients, and an accurate forecasting of ocean hazards like cyclones and tsunamis are some of the examples where more focus can be easily expected to be laid in future. While deciphering the unknown aspects of ocean systems the measurement, collection, analysis and interpretation of ocean data belonging to environmental parameters of waves, wind, tides, currents, tsunami, and storm surge assume large significance.

The requirements arising out of past and present human activities have necessitated approaching the ocean for solutions. While it has become necessary to look for ocean resources in an increasing manner to meet human requirements such as space, transportation, food, minerals, oil and gas, fresh water and energy; understanding changes in the ocean system because of human interference has also assumed significance. As it is widely understood the ocean environment is undergoing change in both short as well as long term. The human interference has created changes in the climate and these changes in turn are slated to make grave impacts on human lives or even to human existence. An enhanced and reliable knowledge of the nature of such change will help macro-level planners in a big way to decide on policies to tackle relevant issues.

The Journal will provide visibility to quality works done in the above areas, and also in many more allied topics.

Analytical, empirical, numerical and data driven methods employed to understand ocean processes, develop ocean facilities, and solve problems of technological nature related to oceans are welcome. The manuscripts may report advancement of theoretical knowledge, computational methods, experimental findings or field studies. Cross disciplinary studies bridging the gap between ocean science and technology will be appreciated.
The contributions could be mainly in the form of original research papers, (including case studies), but may also include review articles, short technical notes, discussions on current and future scientific and technological problems, reports on professional activities, and book reviews.

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Papers scheduled for 2010 publication include:

Estimation of extreme water levels due to cyclonic storms: a case study for Kalpakkam coast
A D Rao, Indu Jain and R Venkatesan
In order to co-exist with nature’s destructive forces in any vulnerable coastal areas, numerical models are needed to predict the sea level rise and associated inland extent of flooding that could be produced by any cyclonic storm. For this purpose, the advanced circulation two-dimensional depth-integrated (ADCIRC-2DDI) model based on finite-element formulation is applied for simulation of surges and associated water levels. Using long term cyclone database, synthesized tracks are deduced for affected coastal districts of Tamilnadu, a state bordering the Bay of Bengal comprising Kalpakkam region. Return periods are also computed for intensity and frequency of cyclones for each coastal district of Tamilnadu. Using the model, validation of surges and associated water levels generated by the November 2000 cyclone, which struck the coast near Pondicherry are initially carried out. The simulations are found to be in good agreement with available observations of post-storm survey reports. Considering the importance of the Kalpakkam region, extreme water levels are computed based on 50-year return period data for generating storm surges, associated water levels and extent of inland inundation. The experiments suggest that the region could be inundated due to water levels produced when the intensity of the cyclone exceeds the threshold value of 62ms-1. It is also found that horizontal extent of inland inundation associated with the peak surge is about 1-1.5 km.
Keywords: ADCIRC model, storm surges, return period, inland inundation, water levels

Extreme Air-gap Demands under deck of Floating Structures
Jing Li, Zhenhua Huang and Soon Keat Tan
This paper presents the findings of a study on the air gap below deck of a typical six-column, double-pontoon semi-submersible in deep water. The writers present a method to establish the distribution of extreme air-gap response to the first-order incident wave. This distribution is found to be an effective way to predict air-gap extremes in a specified duration. As a comparison, the fractile-based method cum Gumbel distribution is also applied to the same floating structure. Comparisons of the numerical results from these 2 different approaches show strong agreement in extreme air-gap response below deck. Moreover, critical loading locations and occurrence of deck impact are also established.
Keywords: under deck air gap, floating structures, extreme air gap response; numerical analysis

Enhancement of the Turbulence Sub-model for More Accurate Predictions of Vertical Stratifications in 3D Coastal and Estuarine Modeling
Wenrui Huang
This paper presents the improvement of the Mellor and Yamada’s 2nd order turbulent model in the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) for better predictions of vertical stratifications of salinity in estuaries. The model was evaluated in a field study site of an estuary in Florida, USA. The three-dimensional hydrodynamic model (POM) was applied to study the salinity mixing mechanism of the density-induced current in responding to tide, wind, and buoyancy forcing. Model tests indicate that model predictions over estimate the stratification using the default turbulent parameters. Analytic studies of density-induced and wind-induced stratified flow indicate that vertical eddy viscosity plays important role in vertical profiles. Initial model revision experiments also show that traditional approach of modifying empirical constants of the turbulent model often leads numerical instability. In order to improve the performance of the turbulent model while maintaining numerical stability, a stratification factor was introduced to allow slight adjustment of the vertical turbulent eddy viscosity and diffusivity. Sensitivity study indicates that the stable stratification factor ranges 1.0 to 1.2 in the case study in Apalachicola River. Model simulations show that increasing the turbulent eddy viscosity by a 1.12 stratification factor results in the best agreement between model predictions and observations. Using the proposed stratification factor of the eddy viscosity and diffusivity will provide a useful approach for modelers to improve the turbulent model performance in predicting turbulent mixing in stratified estuaries and coastal waters.
Keywords: Turbulent model, stratified flow, hydrodynamics, estuary, POM model.

Genetic programming for sea level predictions in island environment
M.A. Ghorbani, O. Makarynskyy, J. Shiri and D. Makarynska
Accurate predictions of sea-level are important for geodetic applications, navigation, coastal industrial and tourist activities. In the current work, the Genetic Programming was applied to forecast half-daily and daily sea-level variations from 12 hours to 5 days ahead. The measurements at the Cocos (Keeling) Island in the Indian Ocean were used for training and testing the employed genetic programming. Results of the Genetic Programming validation indicated that the methodology performed very well in predicting sea-level variations.
Key Words: tide gauge, genetic programming, prediction, statistical evaluation

Call for Papers

The Journal will strive to maintain high standards of publications. It will also attempt to publish as early as possible and in close consultation with the lead author. The contributions could be mainly in the form of original research papers describing development of a new technology or an innovative application of existing ones. Articles are either Papers or Notes. While Papers should describe a complete study, a Note may present ideas that are not yet fully developed but warrant visibility immediately. All articles are published giving the names of the authors and only with the permission of the lead author for the finally agreed text. At publication, copyright is with the Publisher, who also may publish on the Internet. All publications are marketed internationally.

Instructions to authors
Submission of Papers and Notes. The Editor invites electronic forms of article. This should be sent as an email attachment to the Editor preferably in the form of a ‘Word’ file, oth-erwise of pdf format. The entire paper/note should be sent as a single file. The total file size should be less than 10 MB. Please do not encode or compress text unless necessary. Avoid unnecessarily large files.

If there is difficulty transferring equations, symbols or diagrams, these should be faxed or, otherwise, posted to the editor. The editor expects to communicate immediately with the first author about the transfer. Having obtained the article, the editor will communicate with referees by the same rapid methods. The manuscript must not be previously published in any journal or conference proceedings.

Format and style Articles should be in English. Papers are expect-ed to be of about 6,000 words equivalent (about 6 to 10 published pages), although high quality Review Papers may be longer. Notes should be much shorter, normally up to 4 pages or 4000 words.

The order of a Paper should be:
Title: in concise form, with wording helping automatic searches, but no superfluous words.
Authors’ names (first name in full, other initial(s), family name in full) Authors’ affiliations, postal addresses, e-mail addresses.
ABSTRACT of less than 150 words
(written as a ‘free standing’ paragraph and containing key objectives and conclusions)
Key Words: 4 or 5 key words with 2 or 3 words each.
1.. INTRODUCTION
2. sections (CAPITALISED HEADINGS; lower case italic sub heads)
X.. CONCLUSION
Acknowledgement
Appendix
References

Figures (one per page)

Tables (one per page)

Equations
Equations should be numbered sequentially in square brackets [..] to the right margin. Within the text, an equation is referred to as ‘eqn [..], or equations as ‘eqns [ .. - i. For successful sub-mission of equations, it may be necessary to fax these separately
Figures Initially, Figures and Tables should be separate from the rest of the paper and communicated as whole pages. (If figures are not received properly, faxed figures may be asked for. Final figures may have to be posted in disc form or, otherwise, as hard copy. Any hard copy should have the lead author’s name and the figure number written softly on the back).

Photographs
Good quality, clearly reproducible, photographs are encouraged. Reproduction is definitely best from original photo-graphs sent by post.

References
In the text of both Papers and Notes, references are by author’s family name and the year of the reference, as detailed in the Reference List, e.g. Bloggs (1994). Two authors to one reference by e.g. Bloggs and Dobbs (1995). More than two authors by e.g. Bloggs et al (1996). Use ordinary brackets (..) for references. For example, ‘See Bloggs et al. (1996)", or "See authoritative papers (Bloggs 1994, Bloggs and Dobbs 1995)".

Reference List
It is essential that sufficient information be given for readers to find the source material easily. If in doubt, add more infor-mation, e.g. web sites.
For standard publications: authors names and initial, (year),"title of article", name of publication or proceedings, volume and volume number, page numbers, publisher, place and country of publication. e.g.

Bloggs A.B. and Dobbs D.(1995) "Wind in the willows", Journal of Wind Engineering, vol 9 no. 3, pp11 - 18, Multi-Science Publishing, Brentwood, UK.

Bloggs A. B. (1995) "Gone with the wind", in Proc 17th British Wind Energy Association Annual Conference, Wind Energy Conversion, J. Halliday (ed), pp 131138, MEP Ltd, London, UK.

For private communications, it is essential for the reader (or editor) to be able to contact the communicator if necessary So full name and postal address is needed, with e-mail if possible.
Proofs To speed publication, the Editor expects to check the final stage of publication. When copy is from electronic form, the lead author will have inspected the text during processing with the Editor. If requested, final copy can be sent to the lead author for checking before publication, but this is not encouraged in order to save time. The Editorial Review process occurs to improve grammar, punctua-tion and understanding.

Copies of publication

There are no publication charges to authors. The lead author receives from the publisher 25 copies of the paper as printed and one copy of that issue. The Publisher may market copies of Papers and Notes on the Internet.

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