Marine Biogeochemical Modelling and Data Assimilation

Abstract

The inclusion of biogeochemistry into the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment systems represents an exciting opportunity that involves significant challenges. To help articulate these challenges we review marine biogeochemical modeling and the existing applications of biogeochemical data assimilation. The challenges of biogeochemical data assimilation stem from the large model errors associated with biogeochemical models, the computational demands of the global data assimilation systems, and the strong non-linearity between biogeochemical state variables. We use the ocean state estimation problem to outline an approach to adding biogeochemical data assimilation to the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment systems. Our approach allows the biogeochemical model parameters to be spatially and temporally varying to enable the data assimilation system to track the observed biogeochemical fields. The approach is based on addressing the challenges of biogeochemical data assimilation to improve both the state estimation of the biogeochemical fields and the underlying biogeochemical model.