Using Self Organizing Maps to investigate water temperature results of FVCOM model in Chabahar Bay

Water temperature is an important factor in all dependent ocean/sea processes. The FVCOM 3D numerical model was applied to simulate the water temperature in the Chabahar Bay. Chabahar Bay is a semienclosed and shallow omegashaped bay, located on the southeastern coasts of Iran. The correlation coefficient (R) between the FVCOM model results and the field data is 0.95. The trend of seasonal temperature changes is affected by monsoon conditions; a sharp drop in temperature (6 °C) in a short period of time (7 days) was seen due to a sharp increase in evaporation. Self Organizing Maps (SOM) was used to classify output results of FVCOM and determine the main temperature patterns in Chabahar Bay. The number and density of SOM outputs is proportional to the dispersion and distribution of input data. In the 5×4 array of SOM, the main patterns are categorized so that the warmer patterns are on the left and the colder patterns are on the right. About 24% of the maps showed a warm core located between north and northeast of the Bay. The gradient of temperature from south to north of the Bay vary more than 10 °C (in warm maps) to below 5 °C (in cold maps). In 61% of the results related to the midpoint of Chabahar Bay, the surface and bottom temperature are in the range of 22-25 °C and 19-20 °C, respectively.