for the spatial-staggered grid system used in this study. 

 Furthermore, the energy transfer is balanced globally, but not 

 locally. In other words, a balance is obtained when considering the 

 entire domain but not at any individual grid block. 



e) Initial and boundary conditions 



The model was taken initially at rest. The initial positions of 

 the storms were in the Cayman Sea for the hurricanes of record and 

 for all except one synthetic storm employed in the parametric study 

 which will be discussed in Chapter IV. 



Specified volume transport or height anomalies are employed as 

 boundary conditions. Along the solid coastal boundaries the normal 

 component of volume transport is specified as zero. At the open grid 

 elements water levels are placed in equilibrium with the inverted 

 barometric pressure for the external mode and zero for the internal 

 mode. 



3. Wind and pressure forcing 



a) Analytical wind model 



Practically, there are two methods of portraying hurriccine wind 

 fields on the computing grid. One method is to digitize the surface 

 charts that are available. The data are sampled at stipulated time 

 intervals and grid points and then interpolated in space and time to 

 provide the necessary information to the model. This method requires 

 detailed surface charts of wind throughout the simulation period. In 

 addition, this is a laborious technique to apply, especially for this 



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