The Mediterranean Forecasting System (MFS) is a numerical ocean prediction service that produces analyses, reanalyses and short term forecasts for the entire Mediterranean Sea (see picture below). MFS became operational in the late ’90 and was developed within the VI and VII EU Framework programs [1,2,3,4,5], the national program Ritmare and it has finally become part of the Copernicus Marine Service in 2015. The service is available 24 hours a day, all year around.
Two different implementations of the system are available:
- COSMO MFS: the system is forced by the analyses and forecasts from the Limited Area Model forecasting service with a horizontal resolution of 1/16 degrees (6.5 Km, approximately);
- ECMWF MFS: the system is forced by the analyses and forecasts from the global ECMWF service with a horizontal resolution of 1/8 degrees resolution (12.5 km, approximately).