An atmosphere-ocean regional climate model for the Mediterranean area: assessment of a present climate simulation
Artale, V. ; Calmanti, S. ; Carillo, A. ; Dell'Aquilla, A. ; Herrmann, M. ; Pisacane, G. ; Ruti, P.M. ; Sannino, G. ; Struglia, M. V. ; Giorgi, F.
We present an atmosphereocean regional climate model for the Mediterranean basin, called the PROTHEUS system, composed by the regional climate model RegCM3 as the atmospheric component and by a regional configuration of the MITgcm model as the oceanic component. The model is applied to an area encompassing the Mediterranean Sea and compared to a stand-alone version of its atmospheric component. An assessment of the model performances is done by using available observational data sets. Despite a persistent bias, the PROTHEUS system is able to capture the inter-annual variability of seasonal sea surface temperature (SST) and also the fine scale spatio-temporal evolution of observed SST anomalies, with spatial correlation as high as 0.7 during summer. The close inspection of a 10-day strong wind event during the summer of 2000 proves the capability of the PROTHEUS system to correctly describe the daily evolution of SST under strong airsea interaction conditions. As a consequence of the model's skill in reproducing observed SST and wind fields, we expect a reliable estimation of airsea fluxes. The model skill in reproducing climatological land surface fields is in line with that of state of the art regional climate models.
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