The LAMBDA project aims to improve the CMEMS MFCs thermohaline circulation in coastal areas by a better characterisation of the land-marine boundary conditions, with special regard to the salinity fields, through exploring the capacities of watershed numerical modelling and its coupling to mesoscale regional ocean models. New Earth Observation sea surface salinity products and experts groups will evaluate the project products impact on ocean salinity fields.
Currently hydrological models are not generally coupled to coastal and regional ocean models because, even if regarded as a powerful and useful tool, they do not fully accomplish to estimate accurately the right volume of water reaching the coastal zone for many reasons including water management activities such as human consumption, irrigation, etc. For this reason, many coastal and ocean models continue to use river climatologies as boundary conditions for representing such an active boundary. Furthermore, continuous salinity observations in the coastal area are scarce and sensors are highly unreliable while current Earth Observation (EO) products for salinity poorly represents the coastal gradients.
The LAMBDA project will:
- generate improved and standardised freshwater products flows and associated river inputs (including particulate and dissolved properties) in regional and coastal models;
- test LAMBDA products in a regional ocean model and in CMEMS MFCs;
- enhance the development of satellite salinity products to improve the quality of coastal products (i.e. specific algorithms);
- explore the capacity of hydrological models to represent observed river outflows by implementing state-of-the-art models and including human management activities;
- integrate the different time scales of river outflow (extreme events, flood-ebb and spring-neap tidal conditions, dry-wet years) by flexible interfaces;
- benefit from local and regional knowledge provided by coastal experts that will evaluate and drive the evolution of the LAMBDA project through dedicated sessions in large scientific events.
