Thermal modeling for habitat assessment, power plant compliance, and climate impacts — stratification, surface heat exchange, and ice.
Water temperature shapes nearly every aspect of aquatic life — from fish spawning and oxygen levels to algal growth and manatee habitat. Accurate thermal modeling is essential for habitat assessment, power plant compliance, and understanding climate impacts.
EFDC+ covers the full range of temperature processes, including surface heat exchange, solar radiation, a bed thermal model, and an ice sub-model. EEMS can also simulate the thermal footprint of power plant cooling systems, helping operators manage generation while protecting aquatic ecosystems.
A three-dimensional EFDC+ hydrodynamic model with the Sigma-Zed vertical grid was used to investigate the relationship between flow velocity and thermal stability near the Baekje Weir in Korea’s Geum River. The critical flow velocity that can avoid persistent thermal stratification was found to be approximately 0.1 m/s.
The Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code was used to characterize the water temperature of Laguna Lake, a widely used freshwater source in Metropolitan Manila. The lake was found to be thermally unstratified, with an average depth of 3.21 m and mean temperatures ranging from 25 to 29 °C, and the model is positioned for future linkage with the Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program (WASP).
A new vertical layering approach, Sigma-ZED, was developed and applied to the EFDC model to reduce the pressure gradient errors inherent in the standard vertical sigma grid. By allowing the number of layers to vary over the model domain, the approach is more computationally efficient than a comparable sigma stretch grid and more accurately reproduces vertical temperature variation and thermal stratification.
The 3D hydrodynamic Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code (EFDC) was used to model water age and thermal structure of Lake Mead under high-stage and low-stage water level scenarios. Results show water level drawdown plays an important role in thermal stratification and water movement, with the largest impacts in shallow regions such as Las Vegas Bay.
Directly evaluates model accuracy in reproducing lake thermal structure.
Surface heat exchange is the primary physical driver of water temperature simulation.
Same rationale — governs how the model computes water temperature via heat exchange.
Feature update specifically about temperature-modeling configuration options.
Ice formation is temperature-driven and falls under the “stratification, surface heat exchange, and ice” scope of this category.
Ice formation is temperature-driven and falls under the “stratification, surface heat exchange, and ice” scope of this category.
Free convection is a temperature/buoyancy-driven mixing process central to thermal stratification.
GOTM is a turbulence/mixing scheme commonly used to improve thermal stratification predictions.
Sigma-ZED was built specifically to improve reproduction of vertical temperature gradients and thermal stratification.
Sigma-ZED was built specifically to improve reproduction of vertical temperature gradients and thermal stratification.
Sigma-ZED was built specifically to improve reproduction of vertical temperature gradients and thermal stratification.
EFDC+ applications at Lake Mendota have tested the model across thermal stratification, cyanobacteria movement, turbulence, and ice formation. These well-documented demonstrations confirm EEMS’s ability to accurately reproduce seasonal and event-driven thermal patterns in temperate lakes.
EFDC+‘s Sigma-Zed vertical layering was applied to Lake Mead to simulate thermal stratification in this large, deep reservoir on the Colorado River. The result showed that EEMS can reproduce how the thermocline develops and shifts in a deep reservoir — something other models struggle to get right.
