The forecasting system of the marine circulation at regional scale (about 3 km) of the Sicily Strait area (from 9°E to 17° and from 30°N to 39.5°N) actually gives two daily forecasts, at +5 days. They are forced by two different operative weather forecast systems, the high resolution weather forecast SKIRON from IASA (named SCRMS) and the lower resolution weather forecast system from ECMWF (named SCRME). Both the regional forecast systems (SCRMS and SCRME) have been operative since September 2004 and April 2008, respectively. The numerical model is based on the 3D ocean circulation model called POM (Princeton Ocean Model) developed by Blumberg and Mellor (1987) and its open boundaries are nested with the forecast daily mean fields from the Ocean General Circulation Model (OGCM-MFS1671), developed at the Dynamics and Climatology Unit of the INGV in Bologna (Pinardi et al., 2003). The OGCM is based on OPA (Madec et al, 1998). The numerical coupling is one-way asynchronously nested. These fields are used also to initialize the regional ocean forecasting system SCRM. The surface boundary is driven by an air-sea interaction module atmospheric forcing (one-way air-sea interaction scheme). This consists in the use of a well-tuned set of bulk formulae described by Castellari (Castellari et al., 1998) for the computation of momentum, heat and fresh-water fluxes at the interface, where the flux components depend upon the state of the ocean directly. Both ocean regional forecasting systems work in Slave Mode and Near-Real-Time.

The SCRM model domain: Sicily Strait, S-Tyrrhenian Sea, E-Sardinia Channel, W-Ionian Sea

The hindcast fields are computed once a week in operational mode (7 days released on Wednesday). SCRM is driven at surface by ECMWF analysis fields, while at lateral open boundary by OGCM analysis fields.

SCRMS and SCRME give two daily forecasts at +5 days in slave mode, i.e. the forecasts are daily re-initialized through the downscaling of the OGCM through a optimization of initial and lateral conditions by the Variational Initialization tool (VIFOP, Auclair et al., 2000). This tool produces a substantial reduction of noise during the spin-up phase due to the oscillations of spurious gravity waves.

Outputs include the 3D hydrodynamic mean fields (temperature, salinity and total velocity) and 2D mean fields of free surface elevation, heat and water flux and momentum flux as daily and hourly mean fields.

Output in NetCDF format.

Data format can be delivered in any format or with specific information (ex. fixed vertical level, smaller domain, etc) for any particular use in the commercial sector.

Products are granted free of charge to all organizations that pursue research and educational purposes for their non-commercial activities. Private companies and any other user who wishes to access the data for commercial purposes needs a license. Data are distributed by ftp through a secure connection to a dedicated file server. Access is reserved to licensed users only, who will be provided with a personal login and password.

Released products are for the use of both commercial companies and public-research institutions. All provided data are under non-transferable license. Data access for private companies is subject to the payment of a fee, which is calculated according to the type and volume of requested data and, if necessary, the data handling work.

SCRM regional model forecasting system graphic products are available on www.imc-it.org website. Actually, released outputs are daily mean fields (SCRMS) and 6-hours mean fields (SCRME).