Black Sea coastal forecasting system

The Black Sea coastal nowcasting and forecasting system was built within the framework of EU FP6 ECOOP (European COastalshelf sea OPerational observing and forecasting system) project for five regions: the south-western basin along the coasts of Bulgaria and Turkey, the north-western shelf along the Romanian and Ukrainian coasts, coastal zone around of the Crimea peninsula, the north-eastern Russian coastal zone and the coastal zone of Georgia. The system operates in the real-time mode during the ECOOP project and afterwards. The forecasts include temperature, salinity and current velocity fields. Ecosystem model operates in the off-line mode near the Crimea coast

Development of Black Sea nowcasting and forecasting system

The paper presents the development of the Black Sea community nowcasting and forecasting system under the Black Sea GOOS initiative and the EU framework projects ARENA, ASCABOS and ECOOP. One of the objectives of the Black Sea Global Ocean Observing System project is a promotion of the nowcasting and forecasting system of the Black Sea, in order to implement the operational oceanography in the Black Sea region. The first phase in the realization of this goal was the development of the pilot nowcasting and forecasting system of the Black Sea circulation in the framework of project ARENA funded by the EU. The ARENA project included the implementation of advanced modeling and data assimilation tools for near real time prediction. Further progress in development of the Black Sea nowcasting and forecasting system was made in the frame of ASCABOS project, which was targeted at strengthening the communication system, ensuring flexible and operative infrastructure for data and information exchange between the Black Sea partners and end-users. The improvement of the system was made in the framework of the ECOOP project. As a result it was transformed into a real-time mode operational nowcasting and forecasting system. The paper provides the general description of the main parts of the system: circulation and ecosystem models, data assimilation approaches, the system architecture as well as their qualitative and quantitative calibrations.Publisher's Versio