Towards long-term simulations of tidal inlets: Performance analysis and application of a partially parallelized morphodynamic modeling system

Abstract

Portuguese coasts exhibit many complex and contrasting tidal inlets of economic and environmental relevance. Due to the strong dynamics of these inlets, associated to a severe wave climate and a meso-tidal range, the prediction of their evolution remains a challenging task, in particular at yearly time scales. This paper presents a partially parallelized morphodynamic modeling system and analyses its performance. Different approaches are proposed to reduce computation time. Finally, the system is applied to the Óbidos lagoon. Results agree with observations of the development of a meander and the formation of sandbars. A comparison between different grid resolutions shows that, at short time scales (a year), a coarse grid can reduce the computation time significantly, without compromising accuracy.