RCA4-NEMO coupled model

RCA4-NEMO is the regional, coupled climate model at the SMHI. It consists of the RCA4 atmosphere model in a model domain covering the East Atlantic and Europe and the NEMO setup for the North Sea and Baltic Sea. RCA4-NEMO is a fully coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean model, where the different components are coupled every 3 hours using the Oasis3 coupler. The coupler does exchange the surface temperatures of open water and sea ice together with the ice fraction and ice albedo to the atmosphere model. From the atmosphere the ocean-ice model receives the momentum fluxes and pressure at the surface, the shortwave and non-solar heat fluxes and the freshwater fluxes due to the evaporation - precipitation. The freshwater fluxes due to the runoff are routed back into the ocean model using CaMa-Flood, coupled to the system with the same coupling frequency. Alternatively river discharge may be prescribed using external sources like data or hydrological models. Literature: Evaluation of the SMHI coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean model RCA4_NEMO; C. Dieterich, S. Schimanke, S. Wang, G. Väli, Y. Liu, R. Hordoir, L. Axell, A. Höglund, H.E.M Meier; SMHI-Report, RO 47, 2013, ISSN 0283-1112 BaltiX: A 3D Ocean Modelling Configuration for Baltic & North Sea Exchange Analysis; R. Hordoir, B. W. An, J. Haapala, C. Dieterich, S. Schimanke, A. Höglund and H.E.M. Meier; SMHI-Report, Oceanography 115, 2013, ISSN 0283-7714 The OASIS3 coupler: a European climate modelling community software; S. Valcke; Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, Vol. 5, 2012, 2139-2178, doi:10.5194/gmdd-5-2139-2012 A physically based description of floodplain inundation dynamics in a global river routing model; Dai Yamazaki, Shinjiro Kanae, Hyungjun Kim and Taikan Oki; Water Resource Research, Vol. 47, W04501, 2011, doi:10.1029/2010WR009726