%0 Journal Article %T An Atmosphere-Ocean Regional Climate Model for the Mediterranean area: Assessment of a Present Climate Simulation. Climate Dynamics doi:10.1007/s00382-009-0691-8 %+ ENEA, Ocean modelling unit %+ ENEA, Ocean modelling unit %+ Italian National agency for new technologies, Energy and sustainable economic development [Frascati] (ENEA) %+ Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, l'Energia e l'Ambiente (ENEA) %+ Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics [Trieste] (ICTP) %A Artale, Vincenzo %A Calmanti, Sandro %A Carillo, Adriana %A Dell'Aquila, Alessandro %A Herrmann, Marine %A Pisacane, Giovana %A Ruti, Paolo %A Sannino, Gianmaria %A Struglia, Maria Vittoria %A Giorgi, F. %A Bi, X. %A Pal, Jeremy %A Rauscher, S. %< avec comité de lecture %@ 0930-7575 %J Climate Dynamics %I Springer Verlag %V 35 %N 5 %P 721-740 %8 2009-10-15 %D 2009 %R 10.1007/s00382-009-0691-8 %Z Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Ocean, AtmosphereJournal articles %X We present an atmosphere–ocean regional climate model for the Mediterranean basin, called the PROTHEUS system, composed by the regional climate model RegCM3 as the atmospheric component and by a regional configuration of the MITgcm model as the oceanic component. The model is applied to an area encompassing the Mediterranean Sea and compared to a stand-alone version of its atmospheric component. An assessment of the model performances is done by using available observational datasets. Despite a persistent bias, the PROTHEUS system is able to capture the inter-annual variability of seasonal sea surface temperature (SST) and also the fine scale spatio-temporal evolution of observed SST anomalies, with spatial correlation as high as 0.7 during summer. The close inspection of a 10-day strong wind event during the summer of 2000 proves the capability of the PROTHEUS system to correctly describe the daily evolution of SST under strong air–sea interaction conditions. As a consequence of the model's skill in reproducing observed SST and wind fields, we expect a reliable estimation of air–sea fluxes. The model skill in reproducing climatological land surface fields is in line with that of state of the art regional climate models. %G English %L insu-00562599 %U https://insu.hal.science/insu-00562599 %~ INSU %~ GIP-BE