Evaluation of Mediterranean Sea water and heat budgets simulated by an ensemble of high resolution regional climate models
Emilia Sanchez-Gomez,Samuel Somot,Simon A. Josey,Clotilde Dubois,Nellie Elguindi,Michel Déqué +5 more
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TLDR
In this article, the authors compare estimates of Mediterranean Sea heat and water budgets from a range of observational datasets and discuss the main differences between them, taking into account the closure hypothesis at the Gibraltar Strait, they have built several observational estimates of water and heat budgets by combination of their different observational components.Abstract:
Air-sea heat and freshwater water fluxes in the Mediterranean Sea play a crucial role in dense water formation. Here, we compare estimates of Mediterranean Sea heat and water budgets from a range of observational datasets and discuss the main differences between them. Taking into account the closure hypothesis at the Gibraltar Strait, we have built several observational estimates of water and heat budgets by combination of their different observational components. We provide then three estimates for water budget and one for heat budget that satisfy the closure hypothesis. We then use these observational estimates to assess the ability of an ensemble of ERA40-driven high resolution (25 km) Regional Climate Models (RCMs) from the FP6-EU ENSEMBLES database, to simulate the various components, and net values, of the water and heat budgets. Most of the RCM Mediterranean basin means are within the range spanned by the observational estimates of the different budget components, though in some cases the RCMs have a tendency to overestimate the latent heat flux (or evaporation) with respect to observations. The RCMs do not show significant improvements of the total water budget estimates comparing to ERA40. Moreover, given the large spread found in observational estimates of precipitation over the sea, it is difficult to draw conclusions on the performance of RCM for the freshwater budget and this underlines the need for better precipitation observations. The original ERA40 value for the basin mean net heat flux is −15 W/m2 which is 10 W/m2 less than the value of −5 W/m2 inferred from the transport measurements at Gibraltar Strait. The ensemble of heat budget values estimated from the models show that most of RCMs do not achieve heat budget closure. However, the ensemble mean value for the net heat flux is −7 ± 21 W/m2, which is close to the Gibraltar value, although the spread between the RCMs is large. Since the RCMs are forced by the same boundary conditions (ERA40 and sea surface temperatures) and have the same horizontal resolution and spatial domain, the reason for the large spread must reside in the physical parameterizations. To conclude, improvements are urgently required to physical parameterizations in state-of-the-art regional climate models, to reduce the large spread found in our analysis and to obtain better water and heat budget estimates over the Mediterranean Sea.read more
Citations
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Oceanic and terrestrial sources of continental precipitation
Luis Gimeno,Andreas Stohl,Ricardo M. Trigo,Ricardo M. Trigo,Francina Dominguez,Kei Yoshimura,Lisan Yu,Anita Drumond,Ana María Durán-Quesada,Ana María Durán-Quesada,Raquel Nieto +10 more
TL;DR: The most important sources of atmospheric moisture at the global scale are identified, both oceanic and terrestrial, and a characterization is made of how continental regions are influenced by water from different moisture source regions as discussed by the authors.
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Med-CORDEX initiative for Mediterranean climate studies
Paolo Ruti,Samuel Somot,Filippo Giorgi,Clotilde Dubois,Emmanouil Flaounas,Anika Obermann,Alessandro Dell'Aquila,Giovanna Pisacane,Ali Harzallah,E. Lombardi,Bodo Ahrens,Naveed Akhtar,Antoinette Alias,Thomas Arsouze,Roland Aznar,Sophie Bastin,Judit Bartholy,Karine Béranger,Jonathan Beuvier,Sophie Bouffies-Cloché,Jennifer Brauch,William Cabos,Sandro Calmanti,Jean-Christophe Calvet,Adriana Carillo,Dario Conte,Erika Coppola,Vladimir Djurdjevic,Philippe Drobinski,A. Elizalde-Arellano,Miguel Ángel Gaertner,P. Galàn,Clemente Gallardo,Silvio Gualdi,M. Gonçalves,Oriol Jorba,Gabriel Jordá,Blandine L'Hévéder,Cindy Lebeaupin-Brossier,Lu Li,Giovanni Liguori,Piero Lionello,Diego Macías,Pierre Nabat,Barış Önol,B. Raikovic,Karim Ramage,Florence Sevault,Gianmaria Sannino,M. V. Struglia,Antonella Sanna,Csaba Torma,Vassilios Vervatis +52 more
TL;DR: The Med-CORDEX initiative aims at coordinating the Mediterranean climate modeling community towards the development of fully coupled regional climate simulations, improving all relevant components of the system, from atmosphere and ocean dynamics to land surface, hydrology and biogeochemical processes as discussed by the authors.
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Mediterranean Sea response to climate change in an ensemble of twenty first century scenarios
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TL;DR: In this paper, a set of numerical experiments was carried out with the regional ocean model NEMOMED8 set up for the Mediterranean Sea, which is forced by air-sea fluxes derived from the regional climate model ARPEGE-Climate at a 50-km horizontal resolution.
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Long-term climate change in the Mediterranean region in the midst of decadal variability
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated long-term climate change and decadal variability in the Mediterranean region during 1860-2100 based on observational data and the newly available Coupled Model Intercomparison Project-Phase 5 (CMIP5) experiments.
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Mediterranean Sea response to climate change in an ensemble of 21st century scenarios
TL;DR: In this paper, a set of numerical experiments was carried out with the regional ocean model NEMOMED8 set up for the Mediterranean Sea, which is forced by air-sea fluxes derived from the regional climate model ARPEGE-Climate at a 50-km horizontal resolution.
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