High Resolution Gridded Meteorological Data Across the Mediterranean Basin

Abstract

The knowledge on the climatology and the statistics of extreme events is of central interest for a broad range of practical applications. To obtain such information long-term and homogeneous meteorological databases are needed. However, such time series of direct observations are not always available for sufficient long period. For regions that do not have adequate historical observations or measurements are not available or lack homogeneity, the application of advanced atmospheric numerical models is often an alternative solution. In this study a sophisticated downscaling procedure that was applied to reproduce high resolution historical records of the atmospheric conditions across the Mediterranean region is presented. This was accomplished by the dynamical downscaling of the ERA-40 reanalyses with the aid of the atmospheric model of the POSEIDON weather forecasting system. The full three dimensional atmospheric fields with 6 h of temporal resolution and the surface meteorological parameters at hourly intervals were produced for a 10-year period (1995–2004). The meteorological variables are readily available at 10 km resolution and may constitute the atmospheric forcing to drive wave, ocean hydrodynamic and hydrological models, as well as the baseline data for environmental impact assessment studies.