AN INVESTIGATION OF WATER AND ENERGY BUDGETS FOR THE BALTEX REGION-BASED ON SHORT-RANGE NUMERICAL WEATHER PREDICTIONS

The Baltic Sea Experiment (BALTEX) aims at understanding the water and energy budget of the Baltic Sea region and of the catchment area of i ts tributaries. Some of the budget components are investigated using r esults of short-range numerical weather predictions. Comparing these m odelling results with climatological estimates of the respective budge t components provides a valuable tool for model validation. At the sam e time, budget components which are not likely to be determined from o bservations, as, e.g., area mean evaporation, are available from model results. Thus, complete and consistent water and energy budgets can, at least in principle, be gained from model simulations. This study in dicates the overall ability of the model to simulate the gross feature s of the water and energy budgets of the BALTEX region. Some model def iciencies are also clearly recognizable. They require further attentio n and instigate model improvement.