Coupled Atmosphere, Land–surface, Hydrology, Ocean–wave, and Ocean–current Models for Mesoscale Water and Energy Circulations

Coupled model system was developed to simulate mesoscale water and energy circulations. The coupled model system consists of the atmosphere, land-surface, hydrology, ocean-wave, and ocean-current models. The models used in this system are the non-hydrostatic atmospheric dynamic model of PSU and NCAR (MM5), detailed multi-layer land surface model and 3-dimensional hydrology model (named SOLVEG and RIVERS, respectively) developed at Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI), the third-generation ocean wind-wave model of NOAA (WAVEWATCH III), and the Princeton Ocean Model (POM). In this system, calculations of the models are carried out as independent parallel processes and a model coupling program (model coupler) controls these processes and data exchanges among models using Message Passing Interface (MPI). This coupling method is very convenient for the construction of this kind of complicated coupled model. The modifications of models are easy, simply adding some modules for data exchanges to each model code without changing each model's original structure. Moreover, this coupling is flexible and allows the use of independent time step and grid resolution for each model. This coupling model system was applied for the simulation of coastal circulations around the Red Sea. The preliminary results will be presented.