Journal of Marine Science and Engineering Article A Modelling Approach for the Assessment of Wave-Currents Interaction in the Black Sea Salvatore Causio 1,* , Stefania A. Ciliberti 1 , Emanuela Clementi 2, Giovanni Coppini 1 and Piero Lionello 3 1 Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, Ocean Predictions and Applications Division, 73100 Lecce, Italy;
[email protected] (S.A.C.);
[email protected] (G.C.) 2 Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, Ocean Modelling and Data Assimilation Division, 40127 Bologna, Italy;
[email protected] 3 Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies, University of Salento—DiSTeBA, 73100 Lecce, Italy;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract: In this study, we investigate wave-currents interaction for the first time in the Black Sea, implementing a coupled numerical system based on the ocean circulation model NEMO v4.0 and the third-generation wave model WaveWatchIII v5.16. The scope is to evaluate how the waves impact the surface ocean dynamics, through assessment of temperature, salinity and surface currents. We provide also some evidence on the way currents may impact on sea-state. The physical processes considered here are Stokes–Coriolis force, sea-state dependent momentum flux, wave-induced vertical mixing, Doppler shift effect, and stability parameter for computation of effective wind speed. The numerical system is implemented for the Black Sea basin (the Azov Sea is not included) at a horizontal resolution of about 3 km and at 31 vertical levels for the hydrodynamics. Wave spectrum has been discretised into 30 frequencies and 24 directional bins.