By larsas | Mon, 10/31/2022 - 08:53

3km Artic wave model (WAM) from the ARC-MFC Copernicus project

Two pan-Arctic operational wave products are available at MET Norway throughout the European project ARC-MFC Copernicus. One is a forecast and the other is a hindcast. Both use the wave spectral model WAM version Cycle 4.7 in the same domain as shown in the figure with a horizontal resolution of 3 km.

Forecast

The forecast product is produced 2 times a day (at 00 and 12) with a 5 day and 10 day prediction into the future time length respectively. The model uses as forcing fields: surface winds (from ECMWF), surface ocean currents, sea ice concentration and sea ice thickness (from the forecast TOPAZ system).

Hindcast (1985-2021)

The model is forced with winds merged between winds from ERA5 reanalysis and winds from a downscaled 2.5 km Harmony-Arome hindcast (NORA3). The ice variables used come from Topaz reanalysis. The wave hindcast files are on thredds at this address: https://thredds.met.no/thredds/catalog/windsurfer/mywavewam3km_files/catalog.html

Figure 1: Domain of the 3 km resolution Arctic wave model. The shading colors in blue tones represent significant wave height (swh) in meters. The pink line represents the sea ice concentration (SIC) of 0.8.
Figure 1: Domain of the 3 km resolution Arctic wave model. The shading colors in blue tones represent significant wave height (swh)  in meters. The pink line represents the sea ice concentration (SIC) of 0.8.