Developing a Met-ocean Forecasting System for the Iranian Seas

The Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, and the Oman Sea are three important water bodies surrounding Iran in the north and south. There are lots of activities in these zones such as fishing, marine aquaculture, coastal and offshore developments, and maritime transportation. Knowledge about wind and wave conditions is essential for all mentioned marine operations. This study aims to establish a forecasting system for simulating surface wind field and predicting the resultant wave parameters for the next 120 hours over these three important bodies of water. To this end, for wind simulations, the state-of-the-art WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model as a mesoscale meteorological numerical model is adopted to develop an accurate and high-resolution simulation framework for surface fields (such as winds and other necessary meteorological parameters). WRF is a fully parallel three-dimensional atmospheric simulation system that numerically solves the fully compressible and non-hydrostatic equations governing the atmosphere. An ensemble prediction system with 15 members (three physical parametrization schemes and five initial condition perturbations for each one including control initial data) is employed to conduct the forecasts. Wind simulations over the Iranian seas are performed for a number of events whose observational data are available and the system performance was verified. The simulated wind field is applied to simulate wave generation over the entire model domain by using WAVEWATCH III model. Observational data are used to verify the model predictions. Different soft computing schemes are adopted to improve the accuracy of the model. The obtained results and in favorable agreement with measured data, captured for system monitoring in deep water.