SMRCP-TT report to GOVST IV

Matt Martin, Gary Brassington, Hendrik Tolman

GOVST IV, Rio de Janeiro, November 2012

Contents

• Overview of task team

• Coupled workshops.

• Summary of national reports

Introduction

Overview of TT

• Aim of the task team:

To facilitate the development of short- to medium-range coupled ocean/atmosphere/waves/sea-ice forecasting systems.

• Scope:

– Short- to medium-range prediction of the ocean, marine boundary layer,

surface waves and sea-ice.

– Global and regional scale.

– Pursuing coupled prediction systems for improving and extending

ocean/wave/sea-ice state estimation and forecast skill.

– Specific coupling foci: ocean-wave-atmosphere and ocean-sea-ice-

atmosphere.

.

Introduction

Overview of TT

Work plan:

• Establish links to key groups pursuing common objectives for other components of

the coupled systems

• Collate and pursue evidence for the impact of coupled prediction to ocean and

marine prediction and collaborate with other groups to determine impacts to all

components

• Develop jointly a whitepaper and scope, plan and objectives for a workshop to

promote collaboration and coordination of coupled prediction systems for short to

medium range prediction

• Identify and promote opportunities for international projects to advance coupled

prediction research and development

• Identify obstacles/limits and pursue new initiatives to address the same

Main recent activities:

• Developing links with other relevant groups (WGNE/GOV workshop – separate presentation by Gary Brassington).

• Exchange of information on various workshops.

• Exchange of information on the development of coupled forecasting systems by GOV participants.

Introduction

Membership

• Gary Brassington

• Hendrik Tolman

• Matt Martin

• Nicolas Ferry

• Hal Ritchie

• Yuhei Takaya

• Magadalena Balmaseda

• Jim Cummings

• Paul Sandery

• Akiyoshi Wada

Workshops

Introduction

– ECMWF Workshop on Atmosphere-Ocean Interaction , Nov 2008.

– Ocean Atmosphere Workshop, UK Met Office, 1-2 Dec 2009.

– ESA coupled DA workshop, University of Reading, Sep 2012.

– WGNE/GOV workshop on coupled short-range forecasting, Washington DC, March 2013.

– WGNE workshop on systematic errors in weather and climate models, Exeter, UK, April 2013.

– GOV/GSOP workshop on OSEs and coupled forecasting, Hobart, April 2013.

ESA workshop on coupled DA

Overview of meeting

• ESA project on coupled DA:

– ECMWF

– University of Reading

– University of Edinburgh

• Project outline:

– Task 1: The first part of the project will be understand the problem of coupled data assimilation at a theoretical level by using simplified, coupled systems, in which system components operate on different time and spatial scales. Different coupling strategies will be assessed.

– Task 2: Apply the theoretical lessons learned from the simple models to a complex, coupled Earth system.

– Task 3: A decadal re-analysis will be run of the ECMWF coupled atmosphere-ocean system using all available satellite and ground-based observations.

• Organised international meeting to discuss the latest status and plans in various groups with regard to coupled DA.

• Included breakout groups to discuss various issues in more detail.

• Presentations available from: • http://www.esa-da.org/content/international-workshop-coupled-data-assimilation-university-reading-10-12-sept-2012-0

ESA coupled DA workshop

Working group discussions

• Working Group 1: Dealing with different time and space scales. Chair: Matt Martin.

• Working Group 2: Better use of near-surface observations. Chair: Peter Janssen.

• Working group 3: Model errors and biases. Chair: Craig Bishop.

• Idea was to come up with recommendations for:

– Observation agencies

– Operational forecasting agencies

– New research areas

– Useful community actions

• Written reports were to be finalised after the workshop, summarising the discussions in each working group. These will be circulated/made available soon.

• These reports will be included/referenced in the whitepapers for the WGNE/GOV workshop on short-to-medium range coupled prediction.

National report summaries

• Canada, CONCEPTS

• USA, NCEP

• France, Mercator/Meteo-France

• UK, Met Office

• Australia, CAWCR

Page 10 – November-14-12

CONCEPTS

• Several new coupled systems under development as part of CONCEPTS

– Canadian Operational Network of Coupled Environmental Prediction Systems

• Tri-departmental collaboration – To develop coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean

forecasting systems

• Model development – Coupling the GEM (Global Environmental

Multi-scale) atmospheric model to NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean)

• Collaboration with Mercator – French operational oceanographic group

CONCEPTS

Statistics for February 2008

CPL-GL

NC1 CTRL1

ST

DE

CPL

CTRL

Page 12 – November-14-12

CONCEPTS Global Ice-ocean forecasting system

Medium-range Coupled Global Prediction System

• Aims:

– Improve 10day deterministic weather forecasts

– Backbone for other CONCEPTS systems

▪ Boundary conditions for regional system, wave model

▪ Global conditions available for emergency response (e.g. DND)

• Description:

– Based on Mercator operation system (ORCA025 with SAM2)

– Also constrained with CIS/MRD 3DVAR ice analysis

– Coupled to 33km (25km) GEM global

• Status:

– Routine production of weekly ice-ocean analyses since Dec. 2010 – to implement operationally by March 2013

– Evaluation of ice-ocean forecasts underway (results comparable to RIPS to 48-hours, always beats persistence beyond)

– Starting initial evaluation of coupled runs

– Mercator monitoring system being installed

Page 13 – November-14-12

• Early systems have matured and are being implemented operationally.

• Regional systems are converging on a coupled GEM-NEMO framework for application in a variety of Canadian regions, with the Arctic as a major focus.

• An initial global ice-ocean forecast system has been developed and evaluated.

• A coupling-ready global ice-ocean data assimilation and forecast system has been developed and preliminary assessments of ice-ocean forecasts and coupled GEM-NEMO forecasts are underway.

• We look forward to continuing complementary, mutually beneficial international collaborations and exchanges.

Authors + date Presentation ID, 14/NNN

NCEP coupling

HWRF-HYCOM

4th year of parallel testing, generally beats operational.

Paper close to being submitted.

Working on adding WAVEWATCH III.

Coupler ready,

Need manpower to finish / test (with URI, Jeju Nat. U.)

WAVEWATCH III

Much progress on grids, physics, coupling parameters.

Coupling progress slowed down by need to work on NOPP

project on physics.

ESMF interface within year (?).

Coupling with ocean -> Langmuir, Stokes-Coriolis, ….

Authors + date Presentation ID, 15/NNN

NCEP coupling

Ice:

Essential for coupled ocean-atmosphere modeling.

New model develop under way.

Looking forward to NOPP arctic cap project.

CFS v3 design still under development

MOM5 / HYCOM, ….

Great Lakes

Expect funding for coupled VFCOM-WW3-Ice model.

Next generation operational model for GL.

To be coupled to NAM.

Water Quality focus 3D circulation.

Coastal focus unstructured grids.

Ocean-Atmosphere Coupled LAM at Mercator-Ocean & Meteo-France Guillaume Samson, Mercator Océan

Main objective : improve operational TC intensity & track forecasts in the Southwest Indian Ocean (area of responsibility of Meteo-France)

Actual operational model : ALADIN-Reunion (8 km res) AGCM + prescribed SST

Next generation model : AROME-Reunion (2.5 km res, already operational in France)

Current tests & developments : Mercator-Ocean SST (1/4 or 1/12° resolution) as surface boundary condition for AROME-Reunion O-A coupling of AROME-Reunion with Mercator-Ocean ocean model (NEMO) at 1/12°

AROME-NEMO Test Domain:

Atmospheric model: AROME-Reunion 2.5km

initial & lateral boundary conditions from operational Aladin-Reunion 8km model

Oceanic model: NEMO 1/12°

initial & lateral boundary conditions from operational Mercator-Ocean global model ¼°

Atmospheric & oceanic models have the same spatial domain

Coupler: Oasis3 with coupling every 1h

Bulk formulation COARE + tests with ECUME formulation (Belamari 2005)

AROME-NEMO Test Domain:

Technical Developments phase: OK Current work : parallelization / performance tests

Next step: coupled simulations validation (hindcasts)

© Crown copyright Met Office

UKMO

Coupled forecast development summary

• Investigations into the forecast accuracy of coupled medium range forecasts have begun:

• Improvements to both ocean and atmosphere skill in the tropics.

• Similar performance in the extra-tropics.

• Operational coupled forecasts using this system (UM/NEMO/CICE at ~60km/1/4°) will be produced soon for MyOcean2 (for the ocean variables) and for seasonal forecasting purposes.

• A weakly coupled DA system is being developed using existing ocean/sea-ice atmosphere systems. Longer term, plan to develop more fully coupled DA.

• Future work:

• Investigate use of coupled system in MOGREPS (the Met Office EPS).

• Develop higher resolution global (25km atmosphere and ocean/sea-ice).

• Develop regional UK coupled forecasting system.

© Crown copyright Met Office

Tropical Atmosphere Temperature verification

JJA 925hPa DJF 250hPa JJA 100hPa

Bias

RMSE

-0.2

-1.0

0.2

-0.4 0.0

2.0

1.0

3.0 1.6

0.4 0.6

1.8

1 15 days

© Crown copyright Met Office

SST assessment compared to drifting buoys

Global SST results are similar for

coupled and ocean-only runs.

Significant reduction in RMS and

mean errors in the tropical SSTs in

the coupled model.

• CLAM has run in trial forecast mode from February to

August 2012

• Established a data set to study the impact of coupling on

weather and ocean forecasting

• Preliminary results show improvement in SST boundary

condition for ACCESS compared to persistence,

especially in severe weather when natural SST

tendencies relatively large.

Summary

– Impetus on developing short- to-medium range coupled forecasting from a number of centres involved in GOV.

– Global and regional systems being developed for research and operations.

– Good initial progress to begin to demonstrate the benefit of coupling ocean/atmosphere/sea-ice systems over short time-scales.

– Various meetings/workshops being held around the world (e.g. ESA meeting on coupled DA), so useful to share reports from those.

– Joint WGNE/GOV workshop in March 2013 will help build further links to the atmospheric community.