Experiences from regional climate forecasts for the 21st century for the north sea and its application to vietnamese and adjacent waters

Abstract

A mesoscale resolution version of the Hamburg Shelf Ocean Model (HAMSOM) was developed at the Institute of Oceanography, University of Hamburg for the North Sea region. Based on the IPCC scenario A1B, a projected forecast of hydrodynamic conditions in the North Sea region will be simulated by the shelf ocean model HAMSOM for the 21st century. To drive the HAMSOM model, oceanic forcing variables as well as atmospheric forcing variables are prescribed at the open lateral boundaries of the North Sea domain and at the air-sea interface, respectively. Since the atmospheric variables show a large temporal variability and since the North Sea reacts sensitively on changes in the atmospheric forcing, a validation of the atmospheric forcing variables was carried out. All forcing variables are created by a free model run (MPI-OM and REMO) without any data assimilation incorporated and hence, a direct comparison of single data sets with any hindcast data is not applicable. Thus, for the validation monthly climatological means of the REMO data were compared with monthly climatological means of reanalysis data (NCEP and ERA40) for the period 1958-2000. A comparable study for the North Sea using other forcing data and a coarser model resolution has been performed.