The Weather Forecasting System for Poseidon - an Overview

A weather forecasting system has been developed in the framework of the POSEIDON project "Monitoring, forecasting and information system for the Greeks seas". The system is currently running operationally at the National Centre for Marine Research (NCMR) providing detailed and accurate weather forecasts. It also forces a general circulation ocean model and an offshore wave model with the surface fluxes of momentum and heat and with the precipitation rates. Because of the specific applications for marine studies and operations, emphasis was given to the surface processes especially over the water body. The system contains a viscous sublayer model, which is considered as appropriate for a flux description. The system is evaluated systematically with the aid of the POSEIDON buoy network and other meteorological information available. A description of the system and its capabilities are presented below.