An application of the capacitance matrix method to accommodate masked land areas and island circulations in a primitive equation ocean model

The capacitance matrix method has been implemented in a primitive equation ocean model to accommodate islands and portions of irregular coastal boundaries that cannot be treated adequately by boundary-fitted orthogonal curvilinear co-ordinates. The algorithm preserves the ability to solve the streamfunction equation using fast and accurate elliptic solvers that require a rectangular computational domain. By superposition of a set of island Green functions, the solution is adjusted to ensure continuity of pressure around each island. The implementation is tested by comparison with an analytic solution for wind-driven flow in a closed basin similar to the southwest Pacific Ocean.