Experience with ROMS for downscaling IPCC climate models

B. Ådlandsvik, P. Budgell and V. Lien
Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway

Global climate models as used in the IPCC 4AR have low resolution in the ocean. Important physical processes in coastal regions, such as upwelling and tidal mixing, are unresolved or not implemented. To resolve these processes higher resolution and improved physics are needed to study regional ocean climate and its impact on the ecology.

The Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) has been used at IMR to downscale results from global coupled atmosphere-ocean climate models. This has been done on a regional scale for the North Sea, and a basin scale for the North Atlantic and the Arctic. Results from these simulations will be presented. These results show that downscaling provides added value to IPCC model results.