Global ocean reanalysis CORA2 and its inter comparison with a set of other reanalysis products

Abstract

We present the China Ocean ReAnalysis version 2 (CORA2) in this paper. We compare CORA2 with its predecessor, CORA1, and with other ocean reanalysis products created between 2004 and 2019 [GLORYS12v1 (Global Ocean reanalysis and Simulation), HYCOM (HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model), GREP (Global ocean Reanalysis Ensemble Product), SODA3 (Simple Ocean Data Assimilation, version 3), and ECCO4 (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, version 4)], to demonstrate its improvements and reliability. In addition to providing tide and sea ice signals, the accuracy and eddy kinetic energy (EKE) of CORA2 are also improved owing to an enhanced resolution of 9 km and updated data assimilation scheme compared with CORA1. Error analysis shows that the root-mean-square error (RMSE) of CORA2 sea-surface temperature (SST) remains around 0.3°C, which is comparable to that of GREP and smaller than those of the other products studied. The subsurface temperature (salinity) RMSE of CORA2, at 0.87°C (0.15 psu), is comparable to that of SODA3, smaller than that of ECCO4, and larger than those of GLORYS12v1, HYCOM, and GREP. CORA2 and GLORYS12v1 can better represent sub-monthly-scale variations in subsurface temperature and salinity than the other products. Although the correlation coefficient of sea-level anomaly (SLA) in CORA2 does not exceed 0.8 in the whole region, as those of GREP and GLORYS12v1 do, it is more effective than ECCO4 and SODA3 in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. CORA2 can reproduce the variations in steric sea level and ocean heat content (OHC) on the multiple timescales as the other products. The linear trend of the steric sea level of CORA2 is closer to that of GREP than that of the other products, and the long-term warming trends of global OHC in the high-resolution CORA2 and GLORYS12v1 are greater than those in the low-resolution EN4 and GREP. Although CORA2 shows overall poorer performance in the Atlantic Ocean, it still achieves good results from 2009 onward. We plan to further improve CORA2 by assimilating the best available observation data using the incremental analysis update (IAU) procedure and improving the SLA assimilation method.