The main goal of coupled air-sea modeling is an adequate representation of the physical interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean, which includes the surface fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum. The complexity of this problem arises from the fact that none of these fluxes can be considered separately without an analysis of the others. Therefore, in order to capture the basic physical interactions taking place at the interface between the atmosphere and the ocean, coupling between the atmospheric and ocean models is required.

In this study we focus on the importance of the air-sea coupling in terms of the accuracy of atmospheric simulations over the California Coast. In order to do this, a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean model has been developed based on the mesoscale atmospheric model (MM5) and the Princeton Ocean Model (POM). The practical effects of atmosphere-ocean coupling on atmospheric simulations were examined via analysis of two one-month long model runs for the California Coast. The first, a control run, was performed using the standard stand-alone MM5 model. The second run was performed using the fully coupled MM5-POM system. The Bodega Bay buoy data was used for verification of the models' results in terms of the wind speed, wind direction, and air temperature as well as sensible and latent heat fluxes.