The Met Office operational wave forecasting system: the evolution of the regional and global models

Abstract

Abstract. The Met Office operational wave forecasting modelling system runs four times a day to provide global and regional forecasts up to 7 d ahead. The underpinning model uses a recent development branch of the third-generation spectral wave model WAVEWATCH III® (version 7.12) that includes several updates developed at the Met Office. These include the spherical multiple-cell (SMC) grid, a rotated pole grid formulation for mid-latitudes, enhancements to OASIS coupling and updates to the netCDF postprocessing. Here we document the technical details behind the system with a view to further developments. The operational system includes a global forecast deterministic model (GS512L4EUK) and two regional models nested one-way covering the Northwest (NW) European shelf and UK waters (AMM15SL2, where AMM is for Atlantic Margin model) in addition to an Atlantic wave ensemble (AS512L4EUK). GS512L4EUK and AS512L4EUK are based on a multi-resolution four-tier SMC 25-12-6-3 km grid. The regional AMM15SL2 configuration uses a two-tier SMC 3−1.5 km grid and is run operationally both as a standalone forced model (includes wave–current interactions) and as the wave component of a two-way ocean–wave coupled operational system. Model evaluation is focused on the global and regional baseline configurations. Results show evidence of resolution-dependent differences in wave growth, leading to slightly overestimated significant wave heights in coastal mid-range conditions by AMM15SL2 but an improved representation of extremes compared to GS512L4EUK. Additionally, although a positive impact of the surface currents is not always shown in the overall statistics of the significant wave height due to a larger spread in the observation–model differences, wave–current effects help to better capture the distribution of the energy in terms of frequency and direction near the coast (>20 % improvement), which has implications to beach safety, coastal overtopping risk and shoreline evolution. Future system developments such as the use of sea point wind forcing, the optimisation of the models in line with model resolution and the utilisation of SMC multi-grids are discussed.