The MOHID-IST coastal forecasting system developed at IST covers the entire Portuguese Continental Coast downscaling from the IBI-ROOS MERCATOR solution. The system is based in the MOHID code, also developed at IST and uses a generic vertical coordinate. The downscaling methodology consists of 2 nested domains. The first level is a 2D barotropic model forced with the FES2004 global tide solution model at the open boundaries which computes water elevations. The second level is a 3D full baroclinic model which is forced at the boundaries the by the IBI-ROOS regional model with u,v,t,s and ssh, and also by the ssh tide from the Level 1 domain. A more complete description of the downscaling approach can be found in Leitão et al (2005). The atmospheric forcing is made using the meteorological forecasts from the MM5-IST regional weather forecast system for Portugal.
Portuguese Coast : 34.8°N to 45°N and 12.6W to 4.5W
MOHID (Primitive Equations) (Leitão et al.)
Daily 3 days forecast
0.06° grid
- 43 vertical levels (6m to 300 m) - Free surface
- Shaved cells at the bottom
- Lagrangian vertical coordinate (Martins et al, 2001)
SRTM30 + local charts in near shore areas
- Hourly MM5 forecasts
- Bulk formulas for heat fluxes. Downward long wave radiation from meteorological model
- Radiative Open Boundary Conditions (Flather, 1976)
- Lateral forcing data form the global MERCATOR System PSY2V3
- FES2004 tide - Near real time (24 delay)/climatological river discharges
Partial slip lateral boundary friction condition
Non linear bottom friction
Biharmonic diffusion
Constant diffusion coefficient
k-epsilon model GOTM (Burchard et al, 2001
- New bathymetry
- New Level1 (2D tide) domain, extended Level2 domain towards the Mediterranean Sea (Gibraltar strait fully included)
- daily 3 days forecasts
- New initialization method. V0 was fully reinitialized every week, covering a 7 day analysis period and 7 days forecast;
- Surface forcings improved. MM5 3 days forecasts updated every 6 hours.
- River discharges included.
- Tide imposition improved from FES95 to FES2004.
- Hourly surface outputs and full 3D outputs every 3 hours.
- Online validation near real time validation against SST remote sensing L2, L3 and L4 products (MODIS, MISST-GODAE, OSTIA) and coastal buoys (Inst. Hidrográfico-Portugal; Puertos del Estado-Spain).