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Applications for GODAE products
Existing and potential areas for GODAE products are described below. Also possible end users are identified.
Ocean mesoscale and surface fields and short-range forecasts
The generation of global products at the mesoscale will be one of the important, demonstrable outcomes of GODAE. The high resolution and regional nature of the applications mean that for many applications provision of tools for users to select data for specific regions would be very valuable.
For some applications (e.g. Navies, marine safety, coastal forecasts) there is a demand for short-range forecasts as well as ocean state estimates; for others (e.g., oil companies) accurate statistics of mean state, variability and extreme states are also of value. GODAE products at the mesoscale will also have research applications for both physical and biogeochemical oceanography.
Coastal applications
Coastal applications will use GODAE ocean state estimates as boundary conditions for coastal/ littoral zone hindcasts and forecasts and analyses. Development of GODAE products for these applications will represent a significant research effort between centres. Issues of nesting of models of different resolution, importance of regional wave models, consistency in bathymetry, forcing, boundary configurations, and input to ecosystem models are critical elements for collaboration. The issue of two-way coupling wherein GODAE products may benefit from input of higher resolution and better representation of coastal processes is also an area of potential research collaboration.
The end users will include regional/local governments responsible for coastal management, as well as coastal industries such as fishing or recreation.
Seasonal to interannual climate
The most common application for the GODAE ocean state estimate is an initial condition for a coupled model forecast (seasonal-to-interannual prediction: SIP). One of the primary issues to be faced by this community is how best to use the state estimate, i.e., because of the initialisation shock and climate drift of coupled models, the best initialisation state may not be the best state estimate.
There is a demand from the research community for state estimates to help with descriptions/understanding of the ocean variability at these times scales and for assessing prediction skill. There is also some demand for ocean monitoring, including information relevant to fishing industries on shifts in the warm pool boundary, coastal upwelling, etc.
Medium to long-term climate
Although currently there is no medium (decadal) to long-term climate prediction activities, research strategies are starting to emerge to start to address this requirement. The operational imperative is the evidence that the impact of ocean oscillation (e.g. Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) or Arctic Oscillation (AO)) on seasonal predictability of precipitation and surface temperature over continents is just as important as ENSO, and of course that the thermohaline circulation is central to global change scenarios.
Nevertheless, most applications for GODAE products at this timescale are in the realm of research for understanding the long-period variability of the ocean and for defining the requirements and strategy for an ocean observing system for climate monitoring. Questions about climate changes and underlying mechanisms are subtle and require dynamically consistent, high quality state estimates, including the time-varying surface fluxes.
(Last Updated: 16-10-2007)