Abstract
Abstract. The Bosphorus exchange is of critical importance for hydrodynamics and hydroclimatology of the Black Sea. In this study, we report on the development of a medium-resolution circulation model of the Black Sea, making use of surface atmospheric forcing with high space and time resolution, climatic river fluxes and strait exchange, enabled by adding elementary details of strait and coastal topography and seasonal hydrology specified in an artificial box on the Marmara Sea side. Particular attention is given to circulation, mixing and convective water mass formation processes in the model, which are then compared with observations. Open boundary conditions relaxed to seasonal hydrology specified in the artificial box are found to enable Bosphorus exchange with a proper upper layer, lower layer and net fluxes comparable to the observed ranges. These improvements at the artificial boundary and in the interior evolution of the Black Sea allow the study to capture daily, seasonal to decadal climatic variability and change observed in the Black Sea in the last few decades.
Highlights
1.1 A short review of Black Sea oceanography and recent modeling developmentThe Black Sea is a part of the old world seas that has limited communication with the World Ocean
Having a coarser grid, using an earlier version of General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) topography, Levitus gridded climatology for initial conditions, atmospheric fluxes based on European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA-Interim reanalyses and only major rivers such as the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper and Don included, the strait exchange was not sufficiently representative, and an update seemed in order as we moved to the present model configuration for improved results
If the overland runoff were to be taken into account, the total freshwater inputs apparently would increase by another 30 %, amounting to a total of 13 825 m3 s−1 (= 436 km3 yr−1) according to Black Sea data displayed on the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) web portal “freshwater fluxes to the world oceans”, the monthly data for the overland flows could not be separately accessed and are not included in our account
Summary
Water and buoyancy at the sea surface and at coastal and open boundaries dominate the hydrodynamics of semi-enclosed seas Lateral fluxes, especially those articulated in the Black Sea, by inputs from major rivers and the Bosphorus Strait exchange flows demand their adequate representation in this almost totally enclosed sea. None of the previous studies included the Bosphorus exchange dynamics under the real-time atmospheric forcing and circulation, while in the present study we aim to achieve coupling with Bosphorus Strait under real-time forcing by extending the domain to include a portion of the Marmara Sea, as will be detailed . We skip further review of the voluminous literature on stand-alone modeling of the Black Sea, while in the present study we aim to achieve coupling with Bosphorus Strait, extending the domain to include a portion of the Marmara Sea and the Sea of Azov, as will be detailed
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