Establishing Credibilty and Utility of Coastal Ocean-Atmosphere and Ecological Forecasting

Thanks to rapid progress in scientific understanding, innovative observational systems, and highly capable coastal ocean-atmosphere numerical circulation models, and newly appreciated needs of coastal ocean ecologists and environmental and fisheries forecasters for new levels and volumes of information, there are bright glimmers of hope for research and operational coastal ocean forecasting. At the present stage of scientific and technological capabilities, it is professionally necessary to recognize the emerging need for a design approach to advancing the observational and modeling subsystems in concert with expressions of “user needs”. The strategy afforded by the Systems Engineering discipline offers a logical framework to design, based on the contemporary knowledge base, consideration of user needs (including error tolerance) and subsystem options. The important roles of sustained testbeds, and government, private sector, and academic sector partnerships, are discussed.