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The Unresolved Obstacles Source Term (UOST, Mentaschi et al. 2015, 2018, 2019) is a general methodology to parameterize the dissipative effects of subscale islands, cliffs and unresolved coastal features in ocean wave models. It can be applied to any numerical scheme and modulates the dissipation with spectral direction. Its applicability to practical contexts is now made possible by the development of the software package alphaBetaLab, which given a mesh and a high-resolution bathymetry is able to automatically estimate the cell-dependent transparency coefficients needed by UOST.

alphaBetaLab comes as a python3 library, and its use requires basic python skills like writing and running simple scripts (https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/Overview). Examples on how to set up such scripts can be found here. alphaBetaLab can run on Linux, macOS and Windows.

UOST is currently supported in the wave model WAVEWATCH III.

References

Mentaschi, L., Pérez, J., Besio, G., Mendez, F. J., & Menendez, M. (2015). Parameterization of unresolved obstacles in wave modelling: A source term approach. Ocean Modelling, 96, 93-102.

Mentaschi, L., Kakoulaki, G., Vousdoukas, M., Voukouvalas, E., Feyen, L., & Besio, G. (2018). Parameterizing unresolved obstacles with source terms in wave modeling: A real-world application. Ocean Modelling, 126, 77-84.

Mentaschi, L., Vousdoukas, M., Besio, G., & Feyen, L. (2019). alphaBetaLab: Automatic estimation of subscale transparencies for the Unresolved Obstacles Source Term in ocean wave modelling. SoftwareX, 9, 1-6.