A Coastal Forecasting System

A coupled ocean-land-atmosphere model (OLAM) based on the regional atmospheric modeling system (RAMS) and the regional oceanic modeling system (ROMS) developed at Rutgers University has been applied to the New Jersey coastal region since Summer 1999. Satellite images, radar and sodars, CTD and ADCP, and the observations collected at ground and buoy stations are used to evaluate the performance of this very-high resolution forecasting system, and simulated atmospheric and oceanic variables are in good agreement with observations. The OLAM simulations emphasize high spatial and temporal variability of the atmospheric fields and they resolve many sub-synoptic meteorological events (such as sea-breezes) and small-scale surface atmospheric structure due to the coupling of irregular coastline, sea-breaze and synoptic wind fields. These high spatial and temporal atmospheric fields are critical for ocean model to reproduce various coastal processes in this region. With the new experiments in Summer 2000, the impact of the different atmospheric systems on the coastal processes will be analyzed and summarized.