A Consortium for Ocean Circulation and Climate Estimation

A National Oceanographic Partnership Program Award. The original document contains color images.

This project aims to advance ocean data assimilation into a quasi-operational tool for studying ocean circulation. Observing the complete state of the ocean is difficult owing to its turbulent nature and to the sparseness and limitation of extant measurements. This project will establish a routine description of the global ocean by optimally combining available observations using a general circulation model to monitor, assess, and understand ocean circulation. The effort further aims to demonstrate the practical utility of ocean observing systems by developing applications of such syntheses. The project's central technical goal is to establish a complete global ocean state estimation over the 16-plus year period from 1985 to present at 1/4 degree resolution with complete error descriptions, combining all available large-scale data sets with a state-of-the-art general circulation model. Of particular interest is understanding processes underlying the recent 1997-1999 El Nino/La Nina event and the possible shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in 1999. Tools necessary for such a synthesis will be advanced, including improvements in models and assimilation techniques, with an emphasis on devising practical solutions in marshaling diverse data sets and large numerical models on a routine basis. The effort will exploit existing and ongoing oceanographic experiments (e.g., WOCE) and satellite missions (e.g., Jason-1) and will support planned experiments, including the Climate Variability and Predictability Program (CLIVAR) and the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE).