Western Mediterranean Physics Hindcast

The SIROCCO ocean circulation simulation covers the western Mediterranean Sea ( 33°N - 44.5°N / 1.2°W - 16.3°E ) and the period from 1990 to 2023. It is based on the BlueLion configuration of the Symphonie hydrodynamic model (Marsaleix et al., 2008, 2019). The horizontal resolution of the model bipolar grid (1230 x 1308) varies from 340 m in the northwestern Mediterranean to 4.5 km in the Ionian Sea. The vertical grid has vanishing quasi-sigma 50 levels. This dataset includes daily files of sea surface height, temperature, salinity and current velocities.

This simulation was developed in the framework of the PPR RIOMAR.

The initial and open boundary conditions, the atmospheric forcing and the rivers discharge (except from the Gulf of Lion) were provided by the CNRM-RCSM6B, regional climate system model (atmosphere, ocean, land surface hydrology) developed at CNRM (Météo-France) over the Mediterranean CORDEX domain (Med-CORDEX). This coupled simulation is based on the NEMO model at 1/12° for the ocean, the Aladin-Climat model at 12 km for the atmosphere and the ISBA-CTRIP land surface hydrology model. The Gulf of Lion rivers were considered using the hydrology database HydroPortail (http ://www.hydro.eaufrance.fr).