Abstract:

The temperature, velocity, and SSHA fields used in the analyses are from a Gulf of Mexico forecast system based on the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) (Bleck, 2002; Chassignet et al., 2007). The implementation used here has ~ 4km horizontal resolution and 20 layers in the vertical. The surface forcing (winds and heat fluxes) are taken from the 0.5 degree Navy Global Atmospheric Prediction System (Rosmond, 1992), the open lateral boundary conditions are extracted from a multi-year North Atlantic HYCOM configuration, and the K-profile parametrization is used for vertical mixing (Large et al., 1994). See Prasad and Hogan (2007) for specific details of these implementations. The forecast system assimilates satellite altimeter and temperature data as well as all available in situ surface and profile observations for temperature and salinity via the Navy Coupled Ocean Data Assimilation System (Cummings, 2005). This system has been generating three-dimensional forecasts of temperature, salinity, and velocity on a daily basis since September 2009. This dataset was created by the Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE). This research was made possible by a grant from BP/The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.

Suggested Citation:

Jacobs, Gregg. 2013. Gulf of Mexico HYCOM forecasts during the GLAD experiment (June - December, 2012). Distributed by: Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC), Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/N76Q1V5G

Publications:

Jacobs, G. A., Huntley, H. S., Kirwan, A. D., Lipphardt, B. L., Campbell, T., Smith, T., … Bartels, B. (2016). Ocean processes underlying surface clustering. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 121(1), 180–197. doi:10.1002/2015jc011140

Wei, M., Jacobs, G., Rowley, C., Barron, C. N., Hogan, P., Spence, P., … Coelho, E. (2016). The performance of the US Navy’s RELO ensemble, NCOM, HYCOM during the period of GLAD at-sea experiment in the Gulf of Mexico. Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography, 129, 374–393. doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2013.09.002

Beron-Vera, F. J., & LaCasce, J. H. (2016). Statistics of Simulated and Observed Pair Separations in the Gulf of Mexico. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 46(7), 2183–2199. doi:10.1175/jpo-d-15-0127.1

Beron-Vera, F. J., Hadjighasem, A., Xia, Q., Olascoaga, M. J., & Haller, G. (2018). Coherent Lagrangian swirls among submesoscale motions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201701392. doi:10.1073/pnas.1701392115

Beron-Vera, F. J., Olascoaga, M. J., Wang, Y., Triñanes, J., & Pérez-Brunius, P. (2018). Enduring Lagrangian coherence of a Loop Current ring assessed using independent observations. Scientific Reports, 8(1). doi:10.1038/s41598-018-29582-5

Purpose:

The system intends to provide temperature, salinity, currents and sea surface height over the Gulf of Mexico during the GLAD time period throughout the water column.

Data Parameters and Units:

Input files COADS Wind or flux file in NRL format. tau[en]wd zero.[ab] Annual mean wind offset file. Output files airtmp.[ab] Surface air temperature field in degrees C. precip.[ab] Precipitation field in m/s. radflx.[ab] Radiation heat flux field in W/m2(positive into ocean). shwflx.[ab] Short-wave radiation heat flux field in W/m2(positive into ocean). tauewd.[ab] Surface wind stress in N/m2(tau x, positive eastwards). taunwd.[ab] Surface wind stress in N/m2(tau y, positive northwards). vapmix.[ab] Water vapor mixing ratio in kg/kg. wndspd.[ab] Wind speed field at 10 m in m/s. The output data sets consist of atmospheric forcing in MKS units. Heat flux is positive into the ocean. The output files consist of the COADS fields interpolated to the HYCOM grid in HYCOM 2.1 array “.a” and header “.b” format.

Provenance and Historical References:

Bleck, R.: An oceanic general circulation model framed in hybrid isopycnic-Cartesian coordinates, Ocean Modeling, 4, 55-88, doi: 10.1016/S1463-5003(01)00012-9, 2002.

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