Abstract
Abstract. In this evaluation study, the coupled atmosphere–ocean Adriatic Sea and Coast (AdriSC) climate model, which was implemented to carry out 31-year evaluation and climate projection simulations in the Adriatic and northern Ionian seas, is briefly presented. The kilometre-scale AdriSC atmospheric results, derived with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) 3 km model for the 1987–2017 period, are then thoroughly compared to a comprehensive publicly and freely available observational dataset. The evaluation shows that overall, except for the summer surface temperatures, which are systematically underestimated, the AdriSC WRF 3 km model has a far better capacity to reproduce surface climate variables (and particularly the rain) than the WRF regional climate models at 0.11∘ resolution. In addition, several spurious data have been found in both gridded products and in situ measurements, which thus should be used with care in the Adriatic region for climate studies at local and regional scales. Long-term simulations with the AdriSC climate model, which couples the WRF 3 km model with a 1 km ocean model, might thus be a new avenue to substantially improve the reproduction, at the climate scale, of the Adriatic Sea dynamics driving the Eastern Mediterranean thermohaline circulation. As such it may also provide new standards for climate studies of orographically developed coastal regions in general.
Highlights
In the past decade, within the climate community scientific efforts led by the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX; Giorgi et al, 2009) facilitated the rapid development and applications of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) around the world (e.g. Rinke etal. 2011; Nikulin et al, 2012; da Rocha et al, 2014; Huang et al, 2015; Ruti et al, 2016; Zou and Zhou, 2017; Di Virgilio et al, 2019)
For the observations located over land (i.e. E-OBS and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) stations), the first assessment of the AdriSC Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) 3 km model consists in looking at the differences in elevation between measurements and model (Fig. 1c and d)
It should be noticed that the NOAA station locations are extracted from the 3 km model results with a nearestneighbour methodology; i.e. the closest point of the grid is picked without interpolation
Summary
Within the climate community scientific efforts led by the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX; Giorgi et al, 2009) facilitated the rapid development and applications of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) around the world (e.g. Rinke etal. 2011; Nikulin et al, 2012; da Rocha et al, 2014; Huang et al, 2015; Ruti et al, 2016; Zou and Zhou, 2017; Di Virgilio et al, 2019). Within the climate community scientific efforts led by the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX; Giorgi et al, 2009) facilitated the rapid development and applications of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) around the world In coastal regions, such atmospheric models should be coupled with high-resolution ocean models in order to quantify the impact of these extreme conditions on the ocean dynamics and on the marine ecosystems, the erosion or the transport of pollutants, or other systems. Due to their prohibitive numerical cost, coupled atmosphere–ocean kilometre-scale climate models are not commonly used in long-term climate research
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