SAfE (Southern Africa Experiments), a modelling platform for the oceanic circulation around Southern Africa.

Penven, P. (1), Chang, N. (2), Veitch, J. (2), Shillington, F. (2)

(1) Centre IRD de Bretagne, France.
(2) IRD, ECO-UP, France


South of Africa, the presence of the Agulhas Current and the spawning of Agulhas Rings influence the Benguela upwelling system. Consequently, to model the upwelling system, it is necessary to represent the Agulhas current. The SAfE (Southern Africa Experiments) configuration was built by resolving the dynamics of the Agulhas Current as a whole, from its sources close to Madagascar to the dissipation of the Agulhas Rings in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. SAfE is based on ROMS_AGRIF and was built by using ROMSTOOLS. The grid extends from 2.5W to 54.75E and from 46.75S to 4.8S for. The resolution is 1/4 degree. To treat each specific scientific question, a local refinement is set up. Two types of simulations are carried out: climatological and interannual. For the climatological experiments, the solution is calculated over 10 years, using World Ocean Atlas 2001 for the boundaries and COADS for the surface fluxes. For the interannual experiments, SAfE is using the results of an OGCM (SODA) for the boundaries and NCEP for the surface fluxes. The solution is calculated from 1958 to 2001. Currently, 2 nested grids at higher resolution are integrated into SAfE: A grid is centered on the Agulhas Bank, South of Africa, to study the dynamics of the cold tongue, rich in nutrients, located at the middle to east of the Agulhas Bank, and a grid adjacent to all the West coast of Southern Africa to study the Benguela upwelling system as a whole.