HYCOM Coastal Ocean Hindcasts and Predictions: Impact of Nesting in HYCOM GODAE Assimilative Hindcasts
Abstract
The overarching goal is to improve our capability to model and understand currents and water properties in the coastal ocean, and to improve our capability to forecast future changes in these currents and water properties. Coastal ocean models are used for a wide range of purposes, including naval operations, commercial marine operations (including the influence of ocean currents on shipping and oil rigs), storm surge prediction, prediction of pollution dispersion, studies of coastal fisheries and ecosystems, and providing ocean currents for search and rescue operations. This project focuses on one important aspect of improving the performance of coastal ocean models, specifically improving the quality of the fields that are used to initialize these models and provide information on water properties and currents outside of the coastal region being modeled. Although the coastal ocean is strongly influenced by surface atmospheric forcing and coastal freshwater runoff, offshore ocean variability exerts a very significant influence in many regions due to a wide range of processes such as basin-scale climate variability, boundary current meanders, and offshore ocean eddies. To accurately represent the influence of this offshore variability on a coastal ocean model, the model must be nested within fields that accurately represent (1) the initial state of the coastal ocean throughout the model domain and (2) currents and water properties at the nested model boundaries. We will specifically evaluate the use of the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) data assimilation product developed as part of the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) for this purpose. The influence of these initial and boundary fields on the performance of the coastal model will be thoroughly evaluated. This information will provide important feedback that will be used to guide improvements to the HYCOM-GODAE product that provides the initial and boundary fields. The overall regional focus
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA515172
Entities
People
- Alexander Barth
- Eric. P. Chassignet
- George R. Halliwell
- Harley E. Hurlburt
- James A. Cummings
- Lynn K. Shay
- Ole Martin Smedstad
- Patrick J. Hogan
- Robert H. Weisberg
- Villy Kourafalou
Organizations
- University of Miami