Overview of Regional and Coastal Systems

Abstract

During the GODAE period, some coastal and regional systems for short-range ocean forecasts in the Asia-Oceania have been developed. This paper first provides an overview of these operational forecast systems and some pre-operational systems developed by Australia, China, Denmark, India, Japan and Korea in the terms of model domain, resolutions, models, data inputs and data assimilation schemes. These systems cover some key ocean areas in Asia-Oceania. Then services, products, users and feedbacks provided by these systems are shown briefly. Some operational ocean analyses and forecasts support both data products and online graphical public services. Some systems such as the Bluelink ocean forecasting system of Australia have proved skilful in forecasting, coastally trapped waves, coastal upwelling, offshore ocean state and boundary currents of Australian coast. As evidence of the utility of these regional systems, some highlighted examples are also given. For example, some Japanese systems successfully predicted the Korushio large meander in 2004; an operational system provided service for the 2008 Olympic sailing events; a Japan Sea/East Sea forecasting system has been used for successful reproduction and prediction of large numbers of giant jellyfishes in Japan/Sea Sea. All these systems are strongly connected with the GODAE products. The Argo and GHRSST datasets are essential inputs for initialization of these forecast systems. The Indian Ocean is relatively less covered by these regional systems. However, GOOS-CLIVAR’s effort in establishing Indian Ocean Observing system will improve the situation and some of its progresses are highlighted.