Application of Unified Forecast System (UFS) Coastal Infrastructure for Schism and a Comparison of Underwater Glider Observations and Model Results

The Unified Forecast System (UFS) Coastal Applications Team (CAT) - Water Quantity (WQ) is a NOAA driven effort that focuses on the physical properties of coastal ocean models to provide support for the NOAA and NOS transition to a simplified modeling suite. In the Marine Navigation sub-application of UFS CAT, two leading coastal ocean circulation models (FVCOM and SCHISM) are being evaluated to provide insight on the best tools that can be used to generate products for the marine navigation community. Throughout this effort, increasing focus has been placed on the use of the UFS-Coastal framework that inherits physical components and infrastructure from the UFS-Weather Model and builds on the applicability of the UFS-Weather Model to coastal regions based on the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF). Here, UFS-Coastal is used to provide a baseline for a SCHISM-DATM model (SCHISM is driven by atmospheric data) and a SCHISM-DATM-WW3 model (a coupled hydrodynamic-wave model driven by atmospheric data) for the region of the New York Harbor. Then we compare the results from the current testing of this coupling infrastructure to previous SCHISM model runs outside UFS-Coastal, and assess the skill of both configurations using observational data. Focus is also placed in the UFS-CAT WQ effort on model evaluation using multiple types of observational data sources, one of which is glider data. Underwater glider data provided by the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) was used for comparison of salinity and temperature between the model and observational data at two transects in the NY Harbor domain. Here, we discuss this comparison and identify missing features in the model results, such as an offshore warm core eddy. We also demonstrate the potential for further use of this data as an additional tool to help evaluate model skill, especially for coastal ocean processes that have implications for marine navigation users.