ARC MFC: Copernicus Arctic Marine Services
The Arctic Marine Forecasting Center will provide operational forecasts of ocean currents, temperature, salinity, primary production, sea ice and waves out to 10 days ahead as well as reanalyses over the past 25 years.
Objectives
The Arctic MFC is lead by NERSC in tight collaboration with MET Norway and the Institute of Marine Research. Their forecast and reanalysis services rely heavily on the research carried out by the three partners in ocean physical modeling, ecosystem modeling, sea ice modeling and data assimilation and follows directly from the European project MyOcean. In particularly, TOPAZ system is at the core of the service, it uses the HYCOM model coupled to the NORWECOM ecosystem model, and the Ensemble Kalman Filter for assimilating different satellite and in-situ measurements. The contract awards 4.2 MEUR to the three partners for a period of 3 years. In the coming years, the service will also include the following upgrades :
- A wave forecast service consistent with the ocean currents, using the WAM model.
- Doubling of the horizontal and vertical model resolutions
- Boundary conditions from the Global system
- Replacement of the NORWECOM ecosystem model (Skogen and Søiland, 1998) by the ECOSMO model (Daewel and Schrum 2013), with a stronger focus on primary production.
- Offline coupling of the wave and ice-ocean models.
All the data is distributed freely on http://marine.copernicus.eu/
Project Summary
The Arctic MFC will operate the NERSC version of the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) for the whole Arctic domain at a resolution higher than 14 km (corresponding to 1/8th deg N/S), coupled with a sea ice model (NERSC version of the CICE model) and an ecosystem model. The EnKF will be used for assimilating all types of satellite and in situ observations available both in real time forecast and reanalysis modes. Essentially, the proposal offers the continuation of the products served by the MyOcean Follow-On “ARC MFC”. Wave forecasts will be provided by an Arctic configuration of the WAM model. The main upgrades foreseen during the CMEMS phase 1 are the following:
- Addition of wave forecast products by an Arctic configuration of the WAM model.
- Doubling of the horizontal and vertical model resolutions
- Boundary conditions from the Global system
- Replacement of the NORWECOM ecosystem model (Skogen and Søiland, 1998) by the ECOSMO model (Daewel and Schrum 2013), with a stronger focus on primary production.
- Offline coupling of the wave and ice-ocean models.
The consortium lead by NERSC counts three partners: NERSC, MET Norway and IMR. This consortium is built on strong and efficient collaborations within the successive MyOcean projects, where the three partners have settled their roles according to their complementary skills. A summary of the contributions from each partner is given in Table 3.
Table 3: Synthetic summary of partners contributions
|
Partner |
Core Expertise / Tools |
Production |
Diffusion |
Service |
Quality insurance |
|
NERSC |
EnKF HYCOM ECOSMO |
RAN products 3,4 |
|
Second line |
RAN physics and biology |
|
MET Norway |
WAM
|
NRT products 1, 2, 5 |
All products |
Service Desk First line |
NRT products physics |
|
IMR |
NORWECOM NEMO |
|
|
|
NRT and RAN biology RAN physics |
