Wednesday, 12 January 2005: 8:45 AM
Near Real-time Depiction of the California Current System
Results from a real-time modeling system for the US West coast are presented and evaluated relative to observations. As of June 2004, daily results from the Naval Research Laboratory(NRL) global NCOM( Navy Coastal Ocean Model) are posted on the Web(http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/ccsnrt/) with approximately a 1-day delay. Model surface currents and sea surface height are also shown together with SeaWIFS chlorophyll images with an approximate 2-week delay. During the fall of 2004, the system will also include results from a high resolution regional NCOM( ~ 4.5 km resolution) that receives boundary information from the global model and is forced by high resolution surface fluxes from a regional COAMPS model. The global NCOM system, which is currently being tested for operational use at the Naval Oceanographic Office, assimilates daily MCSST surface temperature values and synthetic profiles of temperature and salinity obtained from the MODAS product, which regresses satellite derived SST and SSH values to obtain the synthetic profiles. The NRL Ocean Color Section processes the 1km resolution SeaWIFS imagery using standard and newly developed algorithms to obtain a variety of bio-optical products. Results clearly reveal the close linkages between the spatial and temporal structure of the surface chlorophyll fields to the mesoscale variability of the California Current system. The seasonal progressions of these fields for 2004 and previous years are discussed. Results from a three dimensional ecosystem model embedded within the real-time regional NCOM system are also presented. Although the ecosystem model does not, at present, assimilate any bio-optical information, it is able to reproduce much of the spatial and temporal variability of the observed chlorophyll fields, particularly during the summer and fall seasons.
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