Smart Climatology Applications for Undersea Warfare

Abstract

Undersea warfare operations especially sound navigation and ranging (SONAR) are sensitive to small changes in the ocean environment. Variations in both atmospheric and oceanic conditions on monthly to decadal scales can have significant impacts on U.S. Navy operations in the undersea environment. Climate databases presently used in U.S. Navy tactical decision aids (TDAs) are based on less than optimal data sets and long term mean (LTM) climatologies that are unable to represent climatic trends or variations. Thus existing Navy climatologies are likely to provide inadequate representations of the actual dynamic ocean environment. We have used the Naval Postgraduate School smart climatology process including state-of-the-science atmospheric and oceanic re-analysis data sets to create smart ocean climatologies. Comparisons of these climatologies with existing Navy climatologies based on the Generalized Digital Environmental Model (GDEM) reveal differences in sonic layer depth (SLD) and sound speed. These differences lead in turn to tactically significant differences in the results from Navy TDAs that support undersea warfare.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA488754

Entities

People

  • Allon Turek

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Antisubmarine Warfare
  • Climate Change
  • Data Sets
  • Earth Sciences
  • Environment
  • Geography
  • Naval Operations
  • Naval Warfare
  • Navy
  • Ocean Currents
  • Oceanography
  • Oceans
  • Sea Water
  • Tactical Decision Aids
  • Temperature Gradients
  • Undersea Warfare
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Atmospheric Science/Meteorology
  • Maritime and Naval Warfare Studies
  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers