Assessment of the Canary current upwelling system in a regionally coupled climate model

Abstract The Canary current upwelling is one of the major eastern boundary coastal systems in world, bearing a high productive ecosystem and commercially important fisheries. system (CCUS) has large latitudinal extension, usually divided into zones with different characteristics. Eddies, filaments other mesoscale processes are known to have an impact productivity, thus for proper representation CCUS horizontal resolution required. Here we assess present climate atmosphere–ocean regionally coupled model. regional model presents global oceanic component increased along northwestern African coast, its performance over assessed against relevant reanalysis data sets compared ensemble models (GCMs) atmosphere-only (RCMs) order role resolution. reproduces larger scale pattern seasonal variability band, improving GCMs outputs. Moreover, it shows comparable RCMs representing wind stress near-surface air temperature fields, showing higher coupling modelling. able properly reproducing structures, being simulate events off Cape Ghir, which not well represented most GCMs. Our results ability reproduce as CCUS, opening possibility evaluate change signal there confidence.