Getting ready for daily ROMS prediction

The JPL ROMS team is working hard to get ready for the daily ROMS prediction of the PWS 3D circulation and tides. You can find the most updated ROMS prediction at the JPL web page: http://ourocean.jpl.nasa.gov/PWS. We plan to post our six-hourly nowcast and the 48-hour forecast daily, usually available on the web page in the morning. Currently we are getting satellite measurement of sea surface temperature from national centers. As more in situ and HF radar data become available next week, we will assimilate them into ROMS so that our nowcast and forecast can be improved. We will make a number of side-by-side (ROMS vs Data) comparisons so as to assess the ROMS performance and prediction skills. A web-based drifter trajectory tool has been developed to track the locations of the various drifters being deployed as well as produce ROMS-predicted drifter trajectories to assess the model performance and to enable adaptive sampling (or deployment planning). If we have access to the JPL supercomputers (shared with 5000+ JPL employees), we plan to produce ensemble ROMS predictions: making multiple ROMS predictions using slightly different initial conditions, atmospheric forcing and lateral boundary conditions. The goal for this ensemble prediction is to estimate the uncertainty of the ROMS predicted drifter trajectory, similar as the "track forecast cone" using by the hurricane predictions, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_forecast_cone.

Working with Prof. Peter Olsson at UAA, we are also display real-time comparisons between the observed wind and WRF-predicted wind with a goal to assess the skill of the atmospheric wind prediction. A good ROMS ocean circulation forecast depends heavily on the accurate atmospheric forecast, including wind, air-sea heat flux, and rainfall.

Starting tomrrow July 15, we will issue our daily summary describing the state of PWS meteorology, oceanography and the operational status of ROMS nowcast/forecast.

If you have any questions and need to reach us, please feel free to contact the PI (Dr. Yi Chao, Yi.Chao@jpl.nasa.gov, cell phone 818-434-9612) and the JPL ROMS team (Dr. John Farrara, Dr. Gene Li, Dr. Peggy Li, Dr. Xin Jin, and Quoc Vu).