Abstract
In the Mediterranean basin, moisture transport can occur over large distance from remote regions by the synoptic circulation or more locally by sea breezes, driven by land-sea thermal contrast. Sea breezes play an important role in inland transport of moisture especially between late spring and early fall. In order to explicitly represent the two-way interactions at the atmosphere-ocean interface in the Mediterranean region and quantify the role of air-sea feedbacks on regional meteorology and climate, simulations at 20 km resolution performed with WRF regional climate model (RCM) and MORCE atmosphere-ocean regional climate model (AORCM) coupling WRF and NEMO-MED12 in the frame of HyMeX/MED-CORDEX are compared. One result of this study is that these simulations reproduce remarkably well the intensity, direction and inland penetration of the sea breeze and even the existence of the shallow sea breeze despite the overestimate of temperature over land in both simulations. The coupled simulation provides a more realistic representation of the evolution of the SST field at fine scale than the atmosphere-only one. Temperature and moisture anomalies are created in direct response to the SST anomaly and are advected by the sea breeze over land. However, the SST anomalies are not of sufficient magnitude to affect the large-scale sea-breeze circulation. The temperature anomalies are quickly damped by strong surface heating over land, whereas the water vapor mixing ratio anomalies are transported further inland. The inland limit of significance is imposed by the vertical dilution in a deeper continental boundary-layer.
Highlights
The Mediterranean basin has quite a unique character that results from both physiographic and climatic conditions and historical and societal developments
Temperature and moisture anomalies are created in direct response to the sea surface1 Vol.:(0123456789)temperature (SST) anomaly and are advected by the sea breeze over land
A complete set of physics parameterizations is used with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Single-Moment 5-class microphysical scheme (Hong et al 2004), the new Kain-Fritsch convection scheme (Kain 2004), the Yonsei University (YSU) planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme (Noh et al 2003) and a parameterization based on the similarity theory (Monin and Obukhov 1954) for the turbulent fluxes
Summary
The Mediterranean basin has quite a unique character that results from both physiographic and climatic conditions and historical and societal developments. In the Mediterranean region, sunny weather occurs over a rather long period of the year, from spring to fall. During this period, surface heating produces a significant thermal difference between land and sea. During daytime (nighttime), land temperature exceeds (is lower than) the sea surface temperature. Such differential heating produces breeze systems which can extend over a horizontal range of 100–150 km inland (Drobinski et al 2006) and play an important role in inland transport of moisture (Bastin et al 2005a, 2007). The horizontal extent of the breeze circulation is expected to be even larger in the Southern shore of the Mediterranean region as it scales as the Rossby deformation radius, which is inversely proportional to the Latitude (°N)
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