Assessment of one year of high-resolution operational forecasts for the southeastern Mediterranean shelf region in the MFSTEP project

Within the framework of the MFSTEP project an operational ocean forecasting system for the Southeastern Mediterranean Sea has been implemented and evaluated through a series of preoperational tests and subsequently for one year of operational forecasts. The system is based on the Princeton Ocean Model (POM). The high-resolution shelf model is nested in a coarser resolution regional model, which is in turn nested in a coarser resolution full Mediterranean model. The respective grid sizes of the three models are 1.25, 3, and 6 km. Lateral boundary conditions are taken from the daily mean fields of the regional model while the surface forcing is taken from the hourly values of a regional atmospheric forecast model. When compared to satellite derived sea surface temperatures and the MFSTEP analysis fields, the high-resolution shelf model forecasts are significantly more skillful than the coarser model forecasts for the relevant domain. In the four-day forecasts, most of the error appears to be due to the analysis error inherent in the initial conditions. Future development of the system will therefore focus on improving the specification of the initial conditions.