by Zecchetto, S., F. De Biasio, S. Music, S. Nickovic and N. Pierdicca
The paper investigates the possibility of integrating satellite observations and limited area atmospheric model simulations in the study of the meso-scale processes in the Mediterranean Sea. A tropical-like cyclone, that occurred during 9 and 10 December 1996 over the central Mediterranean Sea, has been taken as case study. The main features of the cyclone, derived from satellite wind and vertically integrated liquid water content (LWC) fields, have been compared with the results of a limited area model, obtained with and without scatterometer data assimilation. The results indicate an acceptable comparability of the wind fields, despite of the model-scatterometer wind bias and the misplacement of the cyclone position in the simulations. The vertically integrated quantities, such the LWC and the model vertically integrated cloud mixing-ratio (CWINT), do not show the same degree of comparability. This is because they reflect only large scale features, while the meso-scale is only detected by the satellite observations. The results of assimilating the scatterometer data into the model show, as expected, an improvement of the cyclone positioning but not a better description of its meso-scale features. The lack of improvement in the determination of the CWINT horizontal structure after scatterometer data assimilation, indicates the need to assimilate also the LWC fields in future studies.