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Clothilde Langlais^1,2
B. Barnier ², P. Fraunie ¹, D. Jacob ³ and K. Beranger ⁴

(1)Lseet, Toulon France
(2)LEGI, Grenoble France
(3)Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany
(4)LOCEAN, Paris France

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Driving coastal circulation models for long periods (e. g. 10 years), requires the use of accurate forcing conditions, with high resolution in space and time, and dynamical consistency over long period. The paper describes the surface and lateral boundary conditions used to drive a regional model of the Gulf of Lion for 10 continuous years between 1990 and 2000. The model based on the NEMO code is designed to study the physical processes at the shelf edge and the exchanges between the shelf and the open ocean. Its horizontal resolution is 1/64° and it has 130 vertical levels. The atmospheric forcing is provided hourly at 18km resolution by a dynamical downscaling of ECMWF re-analysis ERA15 with the regional atmospheric model REMO [Jacob et al., 2001]
Conditions at the limits of the regional model are handled by radiative open boundary conditions, and the use data provided every 5 days by the hindcast of the ocean circulation carried out with a global, high resolution (1/16°) ocean circulation model of the whole Mediterranean Sea driven with ERA40 [Béranger et al.]. This "one-way coupling" is the first application of NEMO to a coastal and microtidal area over a climatically relevant period. This allows to evaluate the modeling ability of the code and to underline specific requirements and critical issues of the long term boundary forcing of coastal ocean models.

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