| The objectives of this work were to develop coupled atmosphere-ocean and atmosphere-wave models for the verification of the atmospheric simulations, model the small-scale ocean circulations, analyze the role of the atmospheric stability in the generation of coastal upwelling, improve the accuracy of numerical prediction over the coastal areas, and develop a parameterization of the swell-induced wind stress.;The study confirmed the applicability of the high resolution Mesoscale Model 5 (MM5) wind field prediction to driving small scale ocean models applied to the U.S. West Coast, and showed that the small-scale circulation pattern of Bodega Bay can be well simulated even by the relatively simple 2D ocean model. Additional experiments performed with the complex 3D Princeton Ocean Model (POM) coupled with the MM5 showed the importance of the atmospheric stability in terms of the modification of the wind stress-curl pattern and the generation of coastal upwelling. The study revealed that the introduction of the stability effect to the wind stress computation may change the monthly mean wind stress curl by up to 0.15Pa/100km, and increase the simulated upwelling velocity by up to 25%, significantly improving the picture of the simulated upwelling and relaxation events. Further analysis performed with the MM5 model run at 9km resolution, showed that the introduction of the atmosphere-ocean coupling greatly improved the quality of the model results. The comparison with buoy data revealed that the atmosphere-ocean coupling led to a 95% increase in the correlation coefficients of the air temperature and heat fluxes, 23% for the wind direction, and up to 25% for the wind speed, and the reduction of the mean errors by up to 30%.;The air-wave interaction model developed during this study showed the applicability of the innovative semi-analytical approach to the computation of the swell-induced stress. Its results also confirmed the importance of the swell-induced stress for medium and weak winds (up to 20% of the total stress) and its significance in terms of atmosphere, ocean and climate modeling. |
