Status and future of global and regional ocean prediction systems

TLDR

Global and regional ocean forecasting systems have evolved rapidly, with GODAE Oceanview coordinating national groups and deploying many operational models that use data assimilation to produce medium‑to‑long‑term physical, biogeochemical, and coupled wave‑ice‑atmosphere forecasts validated against observations. The paper offers a synthetic overview of the GODAE OceanView prediction systems. The systems’ data, product implementation, and user services have been well tested, with most products now available.

Abstract

Operational evolution of global and regional ocean forecasting systems has been extremely significant in recent years. Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) Oceanview supports the national research groups providing them with coordination and sharing expertise among the partners. Several systems have been set up and developed pre-operationally, and the majority of these are now fully operational; at the present time, they provide medium- and long-term forecasts of the most relevant ocean physical variables. These systems are based on ocean general circulation models and data-assimilation techniques that are able to correct the model with the information inferred from different types of observations. A few systems also incorporate a biogeochemical component coupled with the physical system, while others are based on coupled ocean–wave–ice–atmosphere models. The products are routinely validated with observations in order to assess their quality. Data and product implementation and organization, as well as service, for users have been well tried and tested, and most of the products are now available to users. The interaction with different users is an important factor in the development process. This paper provides a synthetic overview of the GODAE OceanView prediction systems.