MWM: A 35 years wind&wave high resolution hindcast dataset and an operational forecast service for the mediterranean sea

The use of reliable wind and wave data for the planning of operational activities at sea is considered of primary importance. This regards the coastal engineering, the oil&gas and recoverable energy fields, the civil protection, the design of offshore structures and ships, the planning of operations at sea and so on. DHI and HyMOLab (Hydrodynamics and Met-Ocean Laboratory of the Dept. of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Trieste) have undertaken a joint research project with the aim to develop a state-of-art wind-wave hindcast dataset for the Mediterranean Sea. The dataset consists of 35 years of hourly data for the period 1979-2013, obtained from a last-generation model chain. The meteorological model used is WRF-ARW, one of the most widely used state-of-the-art open-source non-hydrostatic model. The CFSR d093.0 hourly dataset with a spatial resolution of 0.5° provides the boundary and initial conditions. MIKE21 is used as the wave model with resolution ranging from 0.1° to 0.03° approximately. The use of a local area meteorological model guarantees higher levels of resolution and accuracy in an area such as the Mediterranean Sea where the complex orography and coastline induce short-time/smallspace weather scales. The atmospheric and wave models performance is checked against seven satellite datasets, missions Envisat, ERS-2, Geosat FO, Jason-1, Jason-2, Topex-Poseidon and CryoSat, by means of a procedure based on the moving window technique. Wave data close to coast are compared with available data from more than 20 buoys. The validation performed at the time of the preparation of this manuscript involves ten years of data (2002-2011) and is based on the significant wave height parameter. The results are summarized in probability scatter plots, which show a very good accuracy of the model for both the comparisons with satellite and fixed buoys. Taking advantage of the model set-up performed for hindcast purposes and verified with measured data, an operational wind-wave forecast service has been developed and put to use. The forecast service uses the GFS dataset to provide the boundary and initial conditions.