oves the capability of the PROTHEUS system to correctly describe the daily evolution of SST under strong air-sea interaction conditions. As a consequence of the model's skill in reproducing observed SST and wind fields, we expect a reliable estimation of air-sea fluxes. The model skill in reproducing climatological land surface fields is in line with that of state of the art regional climate models.
This activity is carried out in collaboration with ICTP
Within the CIRCE-EU project, we performed regional climate scenarios for the Mediterranean region.
Figure. SST anomalies (degrees C) for 09/07/2000 in CPL scale observations.
Figure. SST anomalies (degrees C) for 09/07/2000 in fine scale observations.
Mediterranean ocean variability
The oceanic component of the PROTHEUS system is firstly validated comparing the sea level variability reproduced by the model with altimeter data and then used to study the interannual variability of the Mediterranean Sea and to extrapolate future behavior using the A1B scenario of IPCC.
Please note that this work is in progress.
The validation with data shows that the fully coupled model (C4, panell upper right on the figure below) bette represents the 'strange' sea level behavio observed between 1993 and 1998 in the Eastern Mediterranean. Probably due to the cooncomitant Eastern Mediterranean Transient, the sea level in the 90's in the EM shown a complicate behavior with apparent oscillation of the sea level height both in space and time.
Figure. Sea level trend observed between 1993 and 1998 in the EM from AVISO data (upper left panel) fully copled experiment (upper right panel), oceanic stand-alone experiment (lower left panel) and partly coupled experiment (lower right panel, this experiment is equal to C4 except the interactive river run off scheme)
Land-surface atmosphere interaction
We investigate the impact of land cover changes on regional climate over the Euro Mediterranean area. Land use and Land Cover Changes (LCC) affect the local, regional and global climate system through biogeophysical and biogeochemical processes that modify both surface-atmosphere exchanges of momentum, energy and greenhouse gases and surface roughness.
The feedback mechanisms between the land surface and the atmosphere have been increasingly investigated during last decade due to the increasing computational power. Therefore, in order to study the potential impacts of LCC on local climate, the simulations performed by General Circulation Models (GCMs) have been complemented by the use of Regional Climate Models (RCMs): in fact, the coarse resolution of the GCMs limits their capability to capture mesoscale features that play a pivotal role in regional dynamics.
Figure. Differences of deforestated and control simulations of horizontal wind vectors (arrows, m/s) and temperature (shaded area, K) at 960 hPa over the summer season (JJA). The contour lines indicate where these differences are statistically significant (t test for 90% confidence level).
River discharge data analysis
River discharge is one of the five components of the Mediterranean Sea water budget, together with the net inflow of Atlantic water through the Strait of Gibraltar that from the Black Sea at the Dardanelles Strait, evaporation, and precipitation. In terms of absolute values, river discharge (R) represents the smallest contributionto this budget. In fact, climatological annual mean discharge is less than 20% of the atmospheric water budget evaporation minus precipitation (E - P), and the amplitude of its seasonal cycle is almost negligible with respect to the seasonal cycle of E-P. Nevertheless, discharge together with precipitation is the only freshwater input into the basin, and during spring the two basin-integrated components E -P and R are fairly comparable.
We collected historical river discharge monthly series from different hydrological database in order to assess the river discharge contribution to the Mediterranean fresh water input. We identified 68 rivers discharging into the Mediterranean and we estimated the climatological