Use of new in situ observations in operational ocean forecasting

Emerging ocean observing systems - ARGO floats, ferry boxes and long range HF radar - promise to significantly increase the amount of in situ data available in near-real-time. In addition, concentional ship and buoy observations are expected become increa singly available in NRT. The project will assess the potential value of these data type, individually and in combination, for increasing the accuracy of operational forecasts of threee-dimensional currents, temperature and salinity in Norwegian waters. Th e problem will be approached through observation system simulation experiments (OSSE) based on assimilation of the data into numerical ocean models. Field observations are replaced by numerical model output which is manipulated to mimic the real observat ions. These "observations" may then assimilated into parrallel model runs in order to assess their impact on analyses and forecasts. The initial task is to characterize the new observations and implement them in an assimilation scheme. The OSSE's are then perfermed in two parts: one focusing on basin-cale ocean phenomena (large area, low resolution) and the other focusing on shelf/coastal scale phenomena.