Abstract: 

The Bureau of Meteorology has been forecasting the mesoscale ocean state and circulation in the Australian region since 2008.

The leading order problem for the first few systems has been data assimilation and initialisation with a more modest emphasis on ocean modelling. More recently, the initial conditions have become optimised providing forecasts with skill that beats persistence. Greater emphasis is now being given to ocean modelling for the next generation improvements. Following a partnership project with CSIRO and RAN the Ocean Model, Analysis and Prediction System (OceanMAPS) has been extended as a near global eddy-resolving system which was declared operational in 2016.

In this talk I'll provide an overview of the system, the performance, some applications and highlight priority areas for improvement.

Speaker

Gary Brassington

Research Area
Affiliation

Bureau of Meteorology

Date

Mon, 22/08/2016 - 2:00pm

Venue

RC-4082, The Red Centre, UNSW

BIO:

Dr. Gary Brassington is a Principal Research Scientist with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Environment and Research Division and is the lead scientist for the development of operational ocean forecast systems. He leads the BLUElink project science team that implemented Australia's first operational ocean forecasting system, called Ocean Model, Analysis and Prediction System (OceanMAPS). OceanMAPS has been in continuous operation since 2007 with major upgrades through follow-on projects, BLUElink-II and III for which he was a lead investigator.

Gary is the current chair (since 2008) of the Expert Team for Operational Ocean Forecasting Systems (ET-OOFS) for the Joint WMO-IOC technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM) and the Australian representative for the GODAE Oceanview science team. He holds a B.Sc.(hons) (1995) and PhD in Applied Mathematics (2000) from the University of New South Wales and has published in excess of 50 peer reviewed books and journal articles on numerical methods, analysis and oceanography including ocean dynamics, drifting buoys, ocean modelling, quality control, data assimilation, forecasting and verification.