NIWA Seminar

FOAM ­ an operational deep-ocean forecasting system

Dave Storkey
The Met Office
Exeter, U.K

FOAM (the Forecasting Ocean Assimilation Model) is a deep- ocean
forecasting system that has been running operationally at the Met Office
since 1997. It runs daily, driven by fluxes from the Met Office NWP model,
assimilating a wide variety of data types, and producing analyses and 5-day
forecasts of the physical properties of the ocean. There is global coverage
at low resolution, with suites of nested high-resolution models in areas of
interest.

My talk will fall into two sections. In the first I will give an overview
of the components and capabilities (and limitations) of the system and also
try to put FOAM into context by talking about our customers and larger
European projects that we are involved in. In the second half I will show
some results from a major assessment exercise that we have been involved in
recently trying to ascertain how much forecast skill the system has,
especially in forecasting the ocean mesoscale.

Friday, 5 March 10.30 a.m.

Ground Floor Meeting Room, Brodie Building NIWA, Greta Point