Modeling ocean response to an extreme Bora event in Northern Adriatic using one-way and two-way atmosphere-ocean coupling.

We study the performances of (a) fully two-way coupled atmosphere-ocean modeling system and (b) one-way coupled ocean model (forced by the atmospheric model hourly output), as compared to the available in situ (mooring and CTD) measurements during and after an strong Bora wind event in February 2012, which led to extreme air-sea interactions and record breaking seawater cooling and dense water formation in Northern Adriatic. The simulations span the period between January and March 2012. The models used were ALADIN (4.4 km resolution) on the atmospheric side and Adriatic setup of POM (1°=301°=30 angular resolution) on the ocean side. The atmosphere-ocean coupling was implemented using the OASIS3-MCT model coupling toolkit. We show, using in situ seawater temperature measurements, that the two-way atmosphere-ocean coupling improves the ocean response to Bora because it captures transient Bora-induced cooling better than the one-way coupled version of the ocean model. We show that this difference stems mainly from an underestimation of air-sea temperature difference in one-way coupled system during the Bora episode, leading to an underestimation of sensible heat losses from the ocean in the one-way coupled system. We show these losses exhibit significant impact on baroclinic circulation on synoptic timescales. We use CTD observations in the Gulf of Trieste to show that when compared to the one-way setup, the two-way coupled system produces a similar estimation of salinities and density anomalies before the Bora episode, but a significantly better estimation of these quantities afterwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]