A consistent baroclinic quasigeostrophic ocean model in multiply connected ocean domains

The Harvard ocean baroclinic quasigeostrophic model is further extended to enable the treatment of multiply connected domains with arbitrary coastal boundary geometry. A set of sufficient quasigeostrophic boundary conditions at physical boundaries are determined by requiring consistency with a regular asymptotic expansion in the Rossby number of the primitive equations. To take advantage of fast Helmholtz solvers in regular domains, the physical multiply connected domain is embedded in a regular grid, and boundary conditions are imposed by using a variation of the capacitance matrix method. The accuracy of the method is exhibited by comparison with exact solutions.