A regional forecasting system of the Black Sea state for the Georgian coastal zone is developed at the Department of Mathematical Modeling of Geophysical Processes in the Sea and Atmosphere of the Institute of Geophysics of Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University within the framework of EU International projects ARENA and ECOOP. The regional forecasting system is one of the parts of the Black Sea Nowcasting/Forecasting System and enables to calculate 3 days’ forecasts of current, temperature and salinity fields for the Georgian Black Sea coastal zone with 1 km spacing.

 

The regional forecasting system is based on a high-resolution 3-D regional prognostic model of the Black Sea dynamics developed at the Institute of Geophysics (RM-IG). The regional prognostic model with 1 km grid step, which is based on a primitive equation system of ocean hydrothermodynamics in hydrostatic approximation, is nested in the basin-scale model (BSM) of the Black Sea dynamics of Marine Hydrophysical Institute (MHI, Sevastopol, Ukraine) with 5 km grid step. Numerical algorithm is based on the splitting method applying with respect to physical processes and geometrical variables.

 

The Black Sea regional area is limited to the Caucasus and Turkish shorelines and the western liquid boundary coinciding with a meridian 39.36⁰E( near Tuapse city). Data needed on open and upper boundaries, also the 3-D initial hydrophysical fields for the easternmost  regional area are provided operatively from MHI  via FTP  site. These data on the open boundary are values of velocity components, temperature and salinity predicted by the BSM of MHI and on the sea surface 2-D meteorological boundary fields predicted  by the regional atmospheric model ALADIN are used.  The scheme of   functioning of the forecasting system is shown in Figure.