CMS-Flow Salinity Transport

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In many estuaries, the density gradients caused by spatial variations in salinity can be an important driving force in the circulation. Salinity is also a key water quality variable in estuaries, since it affects the chemical and biological processes. Salinity is simulated in the Coastal Modeling System (CMS) in a depth-averaged sense. This means that the estuary or body of water is assumed to be well mixed vertically and the salinity is constant over the water column.

The salinity transport equation is solved with an explicit, finite volume method. The advection term is discretized with upwind scheme, and the diffusion term is discretized with the standard central difference scheme.

The CMS-Flow salinity cards are listed in the table below.


Card Arguments Description Versions
CALC_SALINITY ON | OFF Turns salinity on or off >=v3.75
SALT_OUT_TIMES_LIST integer Index of times list of output times >=v3.75

Boundary Conditions

Salinity Initial Condition


Card Arguments Description Versions
SALINITY_IC real Specifies the initial salinity value in ppt for the whole computational domain >=v3.75
SALINITY_IC_ASCII character Specifies the file name of a scatter set file (*.pts) containing the coordiantes and initial salinity values to be interpolated using the Laplacian interpolation >=4.0

Additional information on Salinity Transport in CMS-Flow can be found here.


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