Simulation of Seasonal and Interannual Variability in the Caspian Sea

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Simulation of Seasonal and Interannual
Variability in the Caspian Sea

• W. Paul Budgell
• Dept. of Physics and Physical Oceanography,
• Memorial University of Newfoundland
• Ralf Toumi, Andrew Singleton,
• Catherine Reifen, James Farley Nicolls
• Dept. of Physics, Imperial College, London

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Outline of Talk

• Background/Motivation
• ROMS Implementation
• Forcing
• Some Results
• Conclusions/Future work

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Motivation

• Regional climate change but first we must gain
  confidence on recent history and variability
• Dynamical downscaling, but after Gildas Cambons
  talk will revisit statistical downscaling
• Regional coupled environmental model
• Operational applications in oil spills, localized
  wave climate, contaminant /salt/aerosol transport

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Caspian Sea Bathymetry (m)
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CSL in IPCC 20th Century Simulations
From Elguindi and Giorgi, Clim. Dyn. 26 (2006)
395-379.
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Projected Changes in CSL
From Elguindi and Giorgi, Clim. Dyn. 26 (2006)
395-379.
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WRF Simulation Nov. 1996
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ROMS Set-Up

• Kate Hedströms branch
• Ice dynamics/thermodynamics shallow
• Wetting-drying (dcrit 0.2 m)
• Sea level is dependent upon (E-P)
• 4 km resolution
• 32 and 20 vertical levels
• Vtransform2, Vstretching2
• ?s8, ?b0.4, hc10 m

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ROMS Set-Up Contd

• River inflow specified for 6 largest rivers
• Atmospheric forcing from ERA40, ERA Interim, or
  WRF (down-scaling ERA40)
• Runs for 1958-2001 (ERA40), 1989-2008 (ERA
  Interim), or 1980-2001 (WRF)
• Climate sensitivity run with reduced river inflow
  for 1980-2001 (2045-2066)

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Some Results
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ROMS Sea Ice Extent
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SST Comparison
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Caspian Sea Levels
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Conclusions/Future Work

• E-P sea level wetting/drying sea ice works
• Change in surface area important
• Very sensitive to river runoff
• WRF higher wind speeds improve evaporation
• ROMS-WRF coupling needed
• ROMS-WRF-SWAN coupling needed

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Job Opportunity

• Dept. of Physics, Imperial College, London is
  hiring post-doc to conduct development of Caspian
  Regional Environmental Model.
• CREM based on coupled ROMS-WRF-SWAN for the
  Caspian Sea