In partnership with other UK institutions, the UK Met Office has developed a regional environmental prediction system at km scale, over two domains: the Northwest European shelf and the Indian region. This provides a flexible research capability with which to study the interactions between atmosphere, land, river, ocean, wave and biogeochemistry processes resolved at km-scale, and the effect of environmental feedbacks on the evolution and impacts of multi-hazard weather events. The UKC3 coupled system incorporates models of the atmosphere (Met Office Unified Model), land surface with river routing (JULES), shelf-sea ocean (NEMO), ocean surface waves (WAVEWATCH III) and biogeochemistry (ERSEM) coupled together using OASIS3-MCT libraries and the FabM coupler. This research framework has enabled to uncover interesting scientific results and to improve to both atmospheric and marine weather prediction. Recent developments have further enabled to run the system in ensemble forecast mode and in climate mode. We present advances allowed by this system, such as:
- benefits of ocean/wave coupled system for marine forecasting
- Improvements of summer temperature forecasts by using SST prediction from the marine prediction system
- improvements to winter storm wind forecasting when coupling the atmosphere with the wave models, resulting in changes to the atmospheric drag scheme
- changes to tropical cyclone prediction from atmosphere-ocean coupling mostly, coupled system enabling a more rigorous treatment of the near-surface energy budget
- Benefits and challenges of integrated hydrology
- dampening of UK heatwaves by tidal processes over the northwest European shelf
- effects of representing marine diurnal cycle on the diurnal cycle of convection over the maritime continent
- impacts of an SST perturbation scheme in ensemble forecasting system
- first atmosphere/ocean climate runs at km-scale over the Northwest European self.
