SA-West Hindcast v1.0

The SA-West Hindcast product provides a 27 year historical representation of the ocean state for the west coast of South Africa. The model was developed using the Coastal and Regional Ocean COmmunity (CROCO) modelling system.

The model curvilinear grid has a variable horizontal grid resolution (1 – 2.5 km) which increases toward the coast. The model has 30 terrain-following (sigma) vertical levels. Open boundary conditions for the model are obtained from GLORYS12V1. Surface forcing is interpolated from ERA5. Model bathymetry is interpolated from digital navigation charts provided by SANHO. This configuration does not include tides.

The model configuration files can be found at the somisana-croco github repository using compile options in the `C01` directory in the provided link.

NetCDF model output files are available as daily averages throughout the water column, and hourly averages for the surface layer of the model. Subsets of the files can be downloaded via Thredds protocol or alternatively entire files can be downloaded via our Mnemosyne file server. The provided model output files have been modified from the raw output format to conform to CF-compliant standards. The raw model output files are however archived separately and can be made available upon request.