New coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice system COSMO-CLM/NEMO: assessing air temperature sensitivity over the North and Baltic Seas

• Main Authors: Trang Van Pham, Jennifer Brauch, Barbara Frueh
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2014
• Subjects: Coupled model; atmosphere ocean-sea-ice interaction; Baltic Sea; North Sea; COSMO-CLM; NEMO; OASIS3; Oceanography; GC1-1581; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doaj.org/article/a2f49fb94be44dc19f99328a8c7c05af

This paper introduces a newly established coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice system with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM and the ocean-sea-ice model NEMO for the North and Baltic Seas. These two models are linked via the OASIS3 coupler. Experiments with the new coupled system and with the stand-alone COSMO-CLM model forced by ERA-Interim re-analysis data over the period from 1985 to 1994 for the CORDEX Europe domain are carried out. The evaluation results of the coupled system show 2-m temperature biases in the range from -2.5 to 3 K. Simulated 2-m temperatures are generally colder in the coupled than in the uncoupled system, and temperature differences vary by season and space. The coupled model shows an improvement compared with the stand-alone COSMO-CLM in terms of simulating 2-m temperature. The difference in 2-m temperature between the two experiments are explained as downwind cooling by the colder North and Baltic Seas in the coupled system.