GODAE is sponsored by
Towards Routine Monitoring
CLS/Mercator-Ocean, Toulouse, France
This two-day workshop is convened by Peter Oke (CSIRO) & Gilles Larnicol (CLS)
Organiser (CLS): Corinne Guiose
Purpose
To date, observing system evaluation activities conducted under GODAE, and related programs, have arguably been academic exercises, designed to assess the limitations of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) for GODAE systems (including forecast, reanalysis and analysis systems). These have typically involved Observing system Experiments (OSEs). The nature of OSEs is that they are performed several years after observations are collected (e.g., during periods when data from 4 altimeters were available and when the Argo program was still incomplete). The GOOS is constantly changing. The significance of the completed OSEs is therefore increasingly irrelevant to the observational community. Results from many of the OSE activities were presented at the 1st GODAE-OOPC OSE/OSSE meeting in November 2007 (in Paris); and were summarised at the final GODAE Symposium (paper 3.5 on https://www.godae.org/Invited-papers.html).
To have a real impact on the operational oceanography community, we should plan to transition OSE activities, under GODAE, towards routine monitoring. Conventional OSEs, where observation types are systematically with-held are probably too computationally expensive to be performed routinely. There are other less expensive diagnostic tools available to us that can be employed to monitor the GOOS for GODAE purposes. The purpose of this workshop is to explore these options, come to agreement on a way forward under GODAE Oceanview, and establish a plan for coordinated routine monitoring of the GOOS for GODAE applications.
Scope
If information from GODAE quality control (QC) systems, assimilation diagnostics, and analysis/forecast sensitivities were collated, interpreted and delivered to the observational community, with specific conclusions and recommendations on a routine basis the GODAE community may have a significant impact on the design and maintenance of the GOOS. This may involve the provision of regular (perhaps quarterly or monthly) reports that describe the relevant diagnostics from GODAE systems to the observation community.
Quality control
All GODAE systems include some form of quality control (QC) systems. These systems return information that, if coordinated, could return useful information to the observational community. For example, suppose several QC systems used under GODAE reject the data from the same Argo floats, altimeter tracks, XBT transects, SST swaths etc. This may be an indication of problems with instruments, sensors and/or processing. If coordinated, the GODAE community could return this information to the observational community.
Assimilation diagnostics
Basic assimilation statistics, like background/forecast and analysis innovations may provide useful information that could be fed back to the observational community.
Analysis sensitivities
With a relatively small computational overhead, all GODAE systems could estimate analysis self-sensitivities that provide an indication of how sensitive an analysis is to every assimilated observation or how the observations are complementary. This type of analysis is routinely used by the NWP community (e.g., at ECMWF) to identify the most/least beneficial observations and those observations that have minimal impact on each analysis.
Forecast sensitivities
Forecast sensitivities are relatively inexpensive tools that can be applied to some systems that would enable us to quantify the impact/importance of each observation on the forecast skill of a forecast system.
Outcomes
The key outcome of this workshop will be agreement on how GODAE Oceanview partners can and should move towards routine monitoring of the GOOS; agreement on how this can/should be coordinated between the international groups; and a staged plan for moving these activities towards routine monitoring so that the GODAE community can have a real impact on the design, assessment and maintenance of the GOOS.
(Last Updated: 19-06-2009)