Purpose. The aim of this work is to investigate real cases of upwelling observed off the southern coast of Crimea in late May 2010 using a coupled mesoscale model.

Methods and Results. The coupled mesoscale ocean-atmosphere model NEMO-OASIS-WRF (NOW) with a 1 km resolution was used. The three areas of reduced sea surface temperature observed in satellite images near Yalta, near Feodosia, and in the Kerch Strait in late May 2010 were reproduced. It was found that at a depth of 10 m, the decrease in water temperature was not limited to these three areas, but also took place along the whole coast from Sevastopol to Kerch. The modeling results made it possible to examine in detail two upwelling events, namely those in the Yalta and Feodosia areas. The main advantage of dynamic regionalization in coupled modeling has been demonstrated: the atmospheric block of the coupled model reproduces the fine-scale structure of the surface wind field in the Yalta area, in particular, the intensification of coastal wind over the sea up to significant values of 12–15 m/s, which is absent in the atmospheric reanalysis data.

Conclusions. It is established that the coastal upwelling near Yalta can be classified as wind-driven, as its development was accompanied by an offshore wind. The Feodosia upwelling is of the Ekman type and is caused by the southwesterly alongshore winds. The vertical structure of both upwelling events on cross sections normal to the coastline is shown. The revealed main difference in the upwelling structures is as follows: in the Yalta upwelling, the water uplift was concentrated in a narrower zone directly adjacent to the coast, whereas in the Feodosia upwelling, the main water uplift took place at some distance from the coast, and the uplift velocity did not reach such high values as in the Yalta case. It is shown that the SST decrease near Yalta and Feodosia occurred precisely due to upwelling, as a decrease in surface water temperature was accompanied by a simultaneous increase in salinity and coincided in time with the intensification of the corresponding coastal wind velocity component directed normal to the coast in the Yalta area and parallel to the coast in the Feodosia region. The obtained results have demonstrated that the application of a modern ocean-atmosphere model in mesoscale modeling makes it possible to reproduce and examine in detail the structure and development of real upwelling events near the southern coast of Crimea, which would be impossible using only observational data.