The Adriatic Sea and Coast (AdriSC) modelling suite has been recently developed with the aim to accurately represent the processes driving the atmospheric and oceanic circulation at different temporal and spatial scales over the Adriatic and northern Ionian Sea. In this spirit, the AdriSC modelling suite is based on two different modules: (1) a basic module which provides atmospheric and oceanic baroclinic circulation at the deep sea and coastal scales, and (2) a dedicated nearshore module which is used to better reproduce atmospherically-driven extreme events.
The basic module of the AdriSC suite rely on the use and development of the Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere–Wave–Sediment Transport (COAWST) modelling system. It is built around the Model Coupling Toolkit (MCT) which exchanges data fields and dynamically couples the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) atmospheric model, the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), and the Simulating WAves Nearshore (SWAN) model. The basic module is set-up with (1) two different nested grids of 15-km and 3-km resolution used in the WRF model and covering respectively the central Mediterranean area and the Adriatic-Ionian region and (2) two different nested grids of 3-km and 1-km resolution used for both ROMS and SWAN models and covering respectively the Adriatic-Ionian region (similarly to the WRF 3-km grid) and the Adriatic Sea only.
In the nearshore module, the fully coupled ADCIRC-SWAN unstructured model (Dietrich et al. 2012) is forced every minute with the off-line atmospheric results of a dedicated high-resolution WRF 1.5-km grid. In more details, (1) the hourly results from the WRF 3-km grid obtained with the basic module are first downscaled to a WRF 1.5-km grid covering the Adriatic Sea and (2) the hourly sea surface elevation from the ROMS 1-km grid, the 10-min spectral wave results from the SWAN 1-km grid and finally the 1-min results from the WRF 1.5-km grid are then used to force the unstructured mesh of the ADCIRC-SWAN model.
The AdriSC modelling suite is installed and fully tested on the European Centre for Middle-range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) high-performance computing facilities. The operational component of the AdriSC modelling suite provides every day at midnight: (1) the next 48-h forecast results from the basic module and (2) the 15-min forecast results from the nearshore module for the next day. These results are published via an interactive interface at http://www.izor.hr/adrisc.
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Figure 2: 2 (a) Spatial domain and boundaries of the WRF 15-km model and, within the red box, the ROMS 3-km model. (b) Vertical variations of the spatially- and temporally- averaged temperature changes for scenarios RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 following pressure level in the atmosphere and depth in the ocean. (c) Time evolution depending on the day of a year (DOY) of the spatially- averaged 2-m air (in green) and sea level (in blue) climatologic temperature changes for scenario RCP 8.5. Vertical structure of the temporally- averaged temperature changes (RCP 8.5) imposed at the southern and western boundaries of (d) the WRF 15-km model and (e) the ROMS 3-km model
The two major challenges posed by performing ultra-high-resolution climate projection simulations are (1) the relative slowness of the AdriSC modelling suite (a month of results produced per day with the basic module alone), and (2) the low temporal and spatial resolutions (only few vertical levels for daily or monthly data) of the coupled regional climate model (RCM) results available to provide boundary conditions to the WRF 15-km and ROMS 3-km models. To address these concerns, the projection of the extreme Adriatic Sea wave events for the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios is performed, in this study, via a pseudo-global warming (PGW) method.
[1]: https://files.osf.io/v1/resources/4n87f/providers/osfstorage/5e391e3a57427b01c90c44d0?mode=render
