Impact of Data Assimilation on Ocean Initialization and El Niño Prediction

Abstract

Abstract In this study, the authors compare skills of forecasts of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) coupled general circulation model that were initiated using different sets of ocean initial conditions. These were produced with and without assimilation of observed subsurface upper-ocean temperature data from expendable bathythermographs (XBTs) and from the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere–Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TOGA–TAO) buoys. These experiments show that assimilation of observed subsurface temperature data in the determining of the initial conditions, especially for summer and fall starts, results in significantly improved forecasts for the NCEP coupled model. The assimilation compensates for errors in the forcing fields and inadequate physical parameterizations in the ocean model. Furthermore, additional skill improvements, over that provided by XBT assimilation, result from assimilation of subsurface temperature data collected ...