Predictability studies for Regions Of Freshwater Influence

The aim of this study is to understand and to assess the effects of river freshwater inflow on the circulation and dynamics of our region of interest, the Central Mediterranean Sea, both on shelf and basin scales, over short-term as well as long-term range. As far as we know this study provides the first investigation on river role on the Central Mediterranean overturning circulation. On the same time we point to improve the hindcast/forecast capability of our regional hydrodynamics model both on shelf and basin scales through a consistent representation of river inflow into the Central Mediterranean Sea taking not account all the physical processes involved in the local water cycle of specific catchments. An integrated modelling system including the atmosphere, the hydrology and the estuary dynamics has been set up upstream the regional ocean model at the Ofanto river outlet. The Estuary Box Model developed by the University of Connecticut (UCONN) jointly with the National Centre for the Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Climate Global Division and the University of Washington (UW) has been implemented for the selected case study, the Ofanto river, downstream of the meteo-hydrological chain and upstream of the regional ocean model. The model performance has been evaluated by comparison with a highly simplified approach based on Knudsen’s relation (Knudsen, 1900). Finally we built up an intermediate modelling approach.