The COASTAL CRETE downscaled forecasting system

<p>The island of Crete is known to be at the crossroads of historic sea routes that served as conveyors of trade, knowledge and culture throughout history, linking some of the world's earliest sophisticated civilizations and currently attracts millions of tourists and cruise passengers. At the same time, the coastal area of Crete is an area of increasing interest due to the recent hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation activities in the Eastern Mediterranean sea and the increase of the maritime transport after the enlargement of the Suez Canal. National and local authorities, like ports and the coast guard, who are involved in maritime safety, such as oil spill prevention, safety of ships, the tourism industry and policy makers involved in coastal zone management, are only few of end users groups seeking high spatial and temporal resolution forecasting products and information to support their maritime activities in the coastal sea area of the island. To this end, a high-resolution, operational forecasting system, namely COASTAL CRETE, has been development for the coastal area of Crete to assist local end users and response agencies to strengthen their capacities in maritime safety and marine conservation. COASTAL CRETE implements advanced numerical hydrodynamic and sea state models, nested in the Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Service of the Mediterranean Sea –CMEMS Med MFC. COASTAL CRETE produces, on a daily basis, 5-days hourly and 6-hourly averaged high-resolution forecasts of important marine parameters, such as sea currents, temperature, salinity, as well as waves. The COASTAL CRETE high-resolution (~1km) hydrodynamic model is based on a modified POM novel parallel code previously implemented by the CYCOFOS  in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levantine Basin, while for wave forecasts, the last ECMWF CY46R1 parallel version  including  a number of new features,  a state-of-the-art wave analysis and prediction model with high accuracy in both shallow and deep waters has been implemented with a resolution of 1km. The harvesting of the CMEMS Med MFC products has been set in an automatic way and managed through the EODATASERVICE technology developed by MEEO, i.e. ADAM (Advanced geospatial Data Management platform - https://adamplatform.eu/). This application provides automatic data exchange management capabilities between the CMEMS Med MFC and the COASTAL CRETE models, enabling data visualization, combination, processing and download through the implementation of the Digital Earth concept. The downscaled high-resolution COASTAL CRETE forecasts will be used to deliver on demand information and services in the broader objectives of the maritime safety, particularly for oil spill and floating objects predictions.</p><p><strong>Acknowledgements: </strong>Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) DEMONSTRATION COASTAL-MED SEA. COASTAL-CRETE, Contract: 110-DEM5-L3.</p>