The largest internal waves in the world's oceans are found in the South China Sea. These waves appear in rank-ordered trains of nonlinear solitary-like waves with amplitudes in excess of 100 m and wavelengths of 500 m to 5 km. Because these waves are short relative to size of the South China Sea, numerical models require very high resolutions. The largest-scale 3-D simulations of the South China Sea to date have been under-resolved and thus limited in terms of their predictive skill. However, much success in modeling the evolution and characteristics (shape, speed, etc.) of these internal waves has been obtained using 1-D models based on weakly nonlinear, weakly nonhydrostatic KdV theory.
Based on the challenges faced with 3-D predictive modeling and the successes of 1-D theoretical/analytical models, we propose and outline the development of a hybrid nonhydrostatic model which represents a compromise between the two existing approaches.