During the last few years the Cyprus Oceanography Centre has developed and operates the operational Cyprus Coastal Ocean Forecasting and Observing System (CYCOFOS). CYCOFOS is one out of several ocean forecasting and observing systems both in Europe and the Mediterranean and part of several European and Mediterranean operational forecasting and observing networks. CYCOFOS has been operational since early 2002 and consists of several forecasting, observing and end user modules.

The MCS of the CYCOFOS ocean forecasts consists of the high and medium resolution coastal ocean flow forecasts in the NE Levantine Basin, the ultra high resolution coastal flow forecasts in the south coast of Cyprus and the coastal, sub-regional and regional wave forecasts for offshore Cyprus, Levantine Basin and the entire Mediterranean Sea. The CYCOFOS flow forecasts are carried out operationally by CYCOM - the Cyprus Coastal Ocean Model. CYCOM is a modified version of the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) and is initialized from lower resolution ocean forecasts and atmospheric forcing. For the CYCOFOS medium resolution flow forecasts, the MFS basin model has been implemented as the parent model for the initial and boundary conditions. This mode of operation allows 10-day, daily averaged forecasts to be completed daily with a grid resolution of about 2.5 km and 25 sigma layers in vertical. For the CYCOFOS high resolution (about 1.5 km and 25 sigma layers in vertical) flow forecasts, the parent model for initial and boundary conditions is the intermediate ALERMO sub-regional model, which is in turn nested within the MFS basin model. This mode of operation allows a 4 and a half day, 6 hour averaged forecast to be repeated daily. Initialization is now once a week, and a spin up of one week takes place with previously downloaded ALERMO outputs. This has shown to increase the number of small scale hydrodynamic features, without increasing significantly the bias in the model relative to parent or observations. A Variational Initialization and FOrcing Platform—VIFOP (Auclair, et al, 2000a; 2000b) has been implemented in order to downscale more accurately the intermediate ALERMO model initial and boundary fields to the CYCOM high resolution grid domain. In particular, spurious gravity waves due to interaction of the interpolated flow field and the high resolution land mask are minimized. The parent model of the CYCOFOS ultra high resolution (about 500 m and 16 sigma layers in vertical) flow forecasts, for initial and boundaries of the conditions, is the CYCOM high resolution model, which is in turn nested hierarchically within the ALERMO sub-regional model, which is in turn nested within the MFS basin model. This mode of operation allows a 4 and half day, daily averaged forecast to be repeated daily. The SKIRON (Kallos and SKIRON group, 1998) high-frequency (hourly) and high spatial resolution (5 km) meteorological forecasts provide the surface forcing for the high and ultra high resolution models, while the ECMWF provides the surface forcing for the CYCOM medium resolution flow forecasts.

The MFS basin model, used for initialization of the CYCOM flow models, includes in-situ data (XBT, CTD, Argo profiles) and satellite sea level anomalies into its assimilation scheme. The satellite sea surface temperatures are used for the correction of the MFS surface heat fluxes. The CYCOFOS flow forecasts have been successfully validated through inter-comparison with satellite remote sensing SST, in-situ CTD observations, ADCP current meters measurement, drifters trajectories and with the parent models.

CYCOFOS use the WAM (WAMDI group, 1988) for offshore wave forecasts and the SWAN (Holthuijsen, et al, 1997) for coastal wave forecasts. The third generation wave models used in CYCOFOS, solve the wave transport equation explicitly without any presumption on the shape of the wave spectrum. Offshore wave forecasts with resolution 14 km and 7 km, respectively for the Mediterranean Sea and the Levantine basin are produced by WAM model. The Levantine wave model domain is nested within the Mediterranean wave forecast, while the Cyprus coastal wave model (with 3.5 km resolution) is nested with the Levantine wave forecast (Fig.2). This mode of operation is producing 3 hourly wave height and wave direction forecast once every day for the coming 60 hours. The high-frequency SKIRON wind forecasts provide the hourly forcing to the CYCOFOS wave models once every day, similar to the CYCOFOS flow forecasts. Significant wave height, mean wave direction, and the SKIRON wind fields, with three hours time interval, are available on-line by CYCOFOS to the end users. The CYCOFOS wave forecast in the Levantine has been validated with wave measurements and with other MOON wave forecasts of lower resolution, and showed good agreements between them.

These include the sea currents, sea temperature and salinity, sea level, the offshore significant wave height and direction.

The products are available in binary format

The products of CYCOFOS are provided over the internet daily, weekly, three-hourly as well as half-hourly. You can download the products by registering at http://www.oceanography.ucy.ac.cy/cycofos/login.php and by selecting “Access CYCOFOS Database” at http://www.oceanography.ucy.ac.cy/cycofos/forecast.html

The products provided by CYCOFOS are free of charge to the end users. Any user of this information is solely responsible for such use and the Cyprus Oceanography Centre disclaims any responsibility for such use.

CYCOFOS system can be accessed online through http://www.oceanography.ucy.ac.cy/cycofos/forecast.html