Rigorous Evaluation of a Fraternal Twin Ocean OSSE System for the Open Gulf of Mexico

Anewfraternaltwinoceanobservingsystemsimulationexperiment(OSSE)systemisvalidatedinaGulfof Mexico domain. It is the first ocean system that takes full advantage of design criteria and rigorous evaluation procedures developed to validate atmosphere OSSE systems that have not been fully implemented for the ocean. These procedures are necessary to determine a priori that the OSSE system does not overestimate or underestimate observing system impacts. The new system consists of 1) a nature run (NR) stipulated to represent the true ocean, 2) a data assimilation system consisting of a second ocean model (the ‘‘forecast model’’) coupled to a new ocean data assimilation system, and 3) software to simulate observations from the NR and to add realistic errors. The system design is described to illustrate the requirements of a validated OSSE system. The chosen NR reproduces the climatology and variability of ocean phenomena with sufficient realism. Although the same ocean model type is used (the ‘‘fraternal twin’’ approach), the forecast model is configured differently so that it approximately satisfies the requirement that differences (errors) with respect to the NR grow at the same rate as errors that develop between state-of-the-art ocean models and the true ocean. Rigorous evaluation procedures developed for atmospheric OSSEs are then applied by first performingobservingsystemexperiments(OSEs)toevaluateoneormoreexistingobservingsystems.OSSEsare thenperformedthatareidenticalexceptfortheassimilation ofsyntheticobservationssimulatedfromtheNR. Very similar impact assessments were realized between each OSE–OSSE pair, thus validating the system without the need for calibration.

[1]  C. Schultz.  Monitoring and Modeling the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A Record‐Breaking Enterprise , 2013 .

[2]  Robert Atlas,et al.  Geophysical validation of NSCAT winds using atmospheric data and analyses , 1999 .

[3]  Keith Haines,et al.  Altimetric assimilation with water property conservation , 1996 .

[4]  Simulation of the Argo observing system in an ocean general circulation model , 2009 .

[5]  A. Mariano,et al.  Lagrangian Data in a High Resolution Numerical Simulation of the North Atlantic. I: Comparison with , 2001 .

[6]  A. J. Marianoa,et al.  Modeling the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill , 2019, Mathematics for Social Justice.

[7]  Baptiste Mourre,et al.  Relative performance of future altimeter systems and tide gauges in constraining a model of North Sea high-frequency barotropic dynamics , 2006 .

[8]  K. Taylor.  Summarizing multiple aspects of model performance in a single diagram , 2001 .

[9]  R. Morss,et al.  Designing Efficient Observing Networks for ENSO Prediction , 2004 .

[10]  R. Lumpkin,et al.  Surface drifter pair spreading in the North Atlantic , 2010 .

[11]  Robert Atlas,et al.  The Effects of Marine Winds from Scatterometer Data on Weather Analysis and Forecasting , 2001 .

[12]  A. H. Murphy,et al.  Skill Scores Based on the Mean Square Error and Their Relationships to the Correlation Coefficient , 1988 .

[13]  Gilles Larnicol,et al.  Combining Argo and remote-sensing data to estimate the ocean three-dimensional temperature fields—a first approach based on simulated observations , 2004 .

[14]  Peter R. Oke,et al.  Objective Array Design: Application to the Tropical Indian Ocean , 2008 .

[15]  R. Daley.  Atmospheric Data Analysis , 1991 .

[16]  Robert Atlas,et al.  Impact Of Satellite Temperature Sounding And Wind Data On Numerical Weather Prediction , 1985 .

[17]  T. Prasad,et al.  Upper‐ocean response to Hurricane Ivan in a 1/25° nested Gulf of Mexico HYCOM , 2007 .

[18]  N. Walker,et al.  The dynamics of the Mississippi River plume: Impact of topography, wind and offshore forcing on the fate of plume waters , 2011 .

[19]  Remy Baraille,et al.  The HYCOM (HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model) data assimilative system , 2007 .

[20]  A. Bennett.  Inverse Methods in Physical Oceanography , 1992 .

[21]  P. Oke,et al.  A Model-Based Assessment and Design of a Tropical Indian Ocean Mooring Array , 2007 .

[22]  S. Cohn,et al.  Ooce Note Series on Global Modeling and Data Assimilation Construction of Correlation Functions in Two and Three Dimensions and Convolution Covariance Functions , 2022 .

[23]  G. Mellor,et al.  Development of a turbulence closure model for geophysical fluid problems , 1982 .

[24]  Eric P. Chassignet,et al.  North Atlantic Simulations with the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM): Impact of the Vertical Coordinate Choice, Reference Pressure, and Thermobaricity , 2003 .

[25]  Robert Atlas,et al.  Simulation studies of the impact of future observing systems on weather prediction , 1985 .

[26]  R. Morss,et al.  Evaluating Observing Requirements for ENSO Prediction: Experiments with an Intermediate Coupled Model , 2004 .

[27]  S. C. Bloom,et al.  Global Surface Wind Vectors Resulting From The Assimilation Of Satellite Wind Speed Data In Atmospheric General Circulation Models , 1989, Proceedings OCEANS.

[28]  A. Barth,et al.  Impact of GODAE products on nested HYCOM simulations of the West Florida Shelf , 2009 .

[29]  O. Knio,et al.  Propagating boundary uncertainties using polynomial expansions , 2012 .

[30]  M. Carnes.  Description and Evaluation of GDEM-V 3.0 , 2009 .

[31]  T. N. Krishnamurti,et al.  An Observing System Simulation Experiment for the Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder (LAWS). , 1993 .

[32]  Robert Atlas,et al.  Atmospheric Observations and Experiments to Assess Their Usefulness in Data Assimilation , 1997 .

[33]  Christopher Grassotti,et al.  Assessment of the Impact of Simulated Satellite Lidar Wind and Retrieved 183 GHz Water Vapor Observations on a Global Data Assimilation System , 1990 .

[34]  R. Murtugudde,et al.  An Observing System Simulation Experiment for an Optimal Moored Instrument Array in the Tropical Indian Ocean , 2007 .

[35]  V. Kourafalou,et al.  Simulating the dynamics and intensification of cyclonic Loop Current Frontal Eddies in the Gulf of Mexico , 2012 .

[36]  G. Halliwell,et al.  Evaluation of vertical coordinate and vertical mixing algorithms in the HYbrid-Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) , 2004 .

[37]  Baptiste Mourre,et al.  Contribution of a Wide-Swath Altimeter in a Shelf Seas Assimilation System: Impact of the Satellite Roll Errors , 2008 .

[38]  P. L. Traon,et al.  Design of an array of profiling floats in the North Atlantic from model simulations , 2002 .

[39]  V. Taillandier,et al.  Assimilation of Argo float positions in the north western Mediterranean Sea and impact on ocean circulation simulations , 2006 .

[40]  W. Large,et al.  Oceanic vertical mixing: a review and a model with a nonlocal boundary layer parameterization , 1994 .

[41]  Andrew F. Bennett,et al.  Inverse Methods in Physical Oceanography: Frontmatter , 1992 .

[42]  Assimilating 20 years of Atlantic XBT data into HYCOM: a first look , 2004 .

[43]  R. Weisberg,et al.  Evaluation of Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment products on South Florida nested simulations with the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model , 2009 .

[44]  Robert H. Weisberg,et al.  Evaluation of trajectory modeling in different dynamic regions using normalized cumulative Lagrangian separation , 2011 .

[45]  Benjamin Jaimes,et al.  Airborne Ocean Surveys of the Loop Current Complex From NOAA WP-3D in Support of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill , 2013 .

[46]  Gustavo Goni,et al.  Application of Oceanic Heat Content Estimation to Operational Forecasting of Recent Atlantic Category 5 Hurricanes , 2008 .

[47]  James Cummings,et al.  A comparison of sequential assimilation schemes for ocean prediction with the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM): Twin experiments with static forecast error covariances , 2011 .

[48]  Chuanmin Hu,et al.  Tracking the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A Modeling Perspective , 2011 .

[49]  Pierre Brasseur,et al.  Expected impact of the future SMOS and Aquarius Ocean surface salinity missions in the Mercator Ocean operational systems: New perspectives to monitor ocean circulation , 2008 .

[50]  Robert Atlas.  Review of Observing System Simulation Experiments to evaluate the potential impact of lidar winds on weather prediction , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

[51]  Douglas Volgenau.  Hurricane Heat Potential of the Gulf of Mexico , 1972 .

[52]  P. Oke,et al.  Impact of Argo, SST, and altimeter data on an eddy‐resolving ocean reanalysis , 2007 .

[53]  R. Bleck,et al.  Global Ocean Prediction with the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model , 2009 .

[54]  Clifford H. Dey,et al.  Observing-Systems Simulation Experiments: Past, Present, and Future , 1986 .

[55]  Gabriel A. Vecchi,et al.  An Observing System Simulation Experiment for the Indian Ocean , 2007 .

[56]  Rainer Bleck,et al.  An oceanic general circulation model framed in hybrid isopycnic-Cartesian coordinates , 2002 .

[57]  C. Wunsch.  The Ocean Circulation Inverse Problem , 1996 .