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Full Region Surface Salinity and Drifters
Full Region Bottom Oxygen
Washington Shelf Bottom Oxygen (5 days)
Puget Sound Surface Temperature
Puget Sound Surface Currents

High-Resolution Submodels

Willapa & Grays Surface Ocean Acidification
Willapa & Grays Bottom Ocean Acidification
Willapa & Grays Surface Temperature
Willapa & Grays Surface Salinity
Willapa & Grays Surface Currents
South Puget Sound Surface Temperature
South Puget Sound Surface Salinity

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Drifters: Puget Sound
Drifters: Willapa & Grays
Drifters: Willapa 2025 Custom
Observation Viewer

Background

How Tides Work in Puget Sound
Observed Long-term Trends in Puget Sound Water Properties
The Estuarine Exchange Flow

About the Model

Data Access
How the Model Works
How We Test the Model
References

Gallery

A Year of Modeled Salinity
A Year of Modeled Oxygen
A Year of Modeled Phytoplankton
    3. Forecast movies
    4. Full Region Surface Salinity and Drifters

Full Region Surface Salinity and Drifters

This is a movie made from the most recent LiveOcean three-day forecast.

The movie has a panel at the bottom that shows time. The tide is evident in the twice-a-day variation of the sea surface height. Daytimes are shown as the thick yellow lines on the horizontal axis. Winds are shown by an arrow in the middle of the map, with the scale given by the circle. The black line off the coast on the map is the 200 m depth line, which marks the "shelf break" separating the coastal region from the deeper ocean beyond.

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Last edited 07/04/2025 14:13:04
  3. Gallery
  5. A Year of Modeled Salinity

A year of salinity in the Pacific Northwest and Salish Sea

The movie above shows a full year of salinity simulated by the LiveOcean model. The red colors are the salty ocean, and the blue colors are the fresher waters influenced by our many rivers. The color scales are different in each panel to emphasize the processes in different regions. The Columbia River plume is especially apparent on the coast, flowing south and offshore during summer when winds are from the north. In the winter the plume hugs the coast and flows north, forced by winds from the south.

Within the Salish Sea and Puget Sound you can see the competition between fresh and salt water in the presence of strong tidal mixing. This gives rise to the "estuarine exchange flow," in which deep ocean water is continually pulled into the large Salish Sea estuarine system. This inflowing water then mixes with a bit of fresh water from the rivers, and finally flows back out to sea. The exchange flow is 20 times bigger than the sum of all our rivers, and is the source of 95% of the nutrients that feed phytoplankton growth in the Salish Sea. In the Puget Sound cross-section you can see that the deep waters of Main Basin grow saltier during the summer months when river flow is lowest. You can also see exchange flow "events" happen as a surge of salty water cascades from Admiralty Inlet down into Main Basin. This happens during especially weak neap tides ("apogean neaps" when the moon is farthest away on its elliptical orbit) when the weaker tidal mixing allows the saltiest water to pour into deep Main Basin.

ReferencesA Year of Modeled Oxygen

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