A SIMPLE PRE-OPERATIONAL MODEL FOR THE PORTUGUESE COAST

A three-level nested, pre-operational model of the portuguese coastal circulation is implemented with MOHID (1). The Mercator large-scale operational North-Atlantic ocean model (2) provides initial and one-way open boundary conditions, while the MM5 mesoscale regional atmospheric forecasting model, forced by ECMRWF data, provides surface forcing. Tide is forced by the FES2004 (3) solution. The open boundary conditions are based in the Flather (4) radiation scheme (sea surface height and barotropic velocity) and in a Flow Relaxation Scheme (velocity, temperature and salinity). The spin up of the model is done connecting gradually the forcing terms. The results show, on a weekly-basis, a gain in spatial variability at the finer scale. Wind driven currents elaborate over the Mercator solution, providing finer scale realistic results at the surface when compared with clear sky remote-sensing SST imagery, showing fronts formation, cold finger-like structures and upwelled jets, while characteristic low frequency features such as the MW veins and the poleward slope-current (1) are evidenced within little more than a week spin-up. Other features such as transient meddies (1, 2) are also evidenced. Some forecasts results are published weekly on a Live Access Server and are also available over OpenDAP. This operational system rises as a potential tool for predicting the fate of tracers near the Portuguese coast and for providing realistic forcing for local coastal models applied to estuaries or hydrographic basins or other client applications such as the Oil observer, also presented in this work.