Preliminary validation for an eddy-resolving Global Ocean Forecasting System –NMEFC-NEMO

Abstract

This paper details the dynamical framework of the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Centre high-resolution global numerical ocean forecasting system (hereinafter referred to as NMEFC-NEMO) and provides a preliminary assessment of its simulation capability in the ocean climatic state. NMEFC-NEMO is developed based on the NEMO version 3.6 and the LIM version 3, and the Local Error Subspace Transform Kalman Filter (LESTKF) ensemble assimilation method is used. The preliminary climatic state assessment shows that the model can reproduce the temperature, salinity and current structure in the observational and reanalysis well, and the results of sea surface temperature and sea surface salinity are 0.05°C and 0.29 PSU colder and saltier, respectively, compared to WOA09. The difference of standard deviation for sea surface height is 0.027 compared to AVISO. We also find that the global mean salinity and kinetic energy of the NMEFC-NEMO are slightly larger in the upper layer relative to the other dataset, which could related to the model parameters setting or insufficient dynamic adjustment.