Ocean Data Assimilation in Support of Climate Applications: Status and Perspectives

Ocean data assimilation brings together observations with known dynamics encapsulated in a circulation model to describe the time-varying ocean circulation. Its applications are manifold, ranging from marine and ecosystem forecasting to climate prediction and studies of the carbon cycle. Here, we ad...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of marine science 2016-01, Vol.8 (1), p.491-518
Main Authors: Stammer, D, Balmaseda, M, Heimbach, P, Köhl, A, Weaver, A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Climate Change
climate predictions
data assimilation
data synthesis
Ecosystem
Marine
modeling
Models, Theoretical
observing system
ocean circulation
Oceanography - trends
Seawater - chemistry
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Ocean data assimilation brings together observations with known dynamics encapsulated in a circulation model to describe the time-varying ocean circulation. Its applications are manifold, ranging from marine and ecosystem forecasting to climate prediction and studies of the carbon cycle. Here, we address only climate applications, which range from improving our understanding of ocean circulation to estimating initial or boundary conditions and model parameters for ocean and climate forecasts. Because of differences in underlying methodologies, data assimilation products must be used judiciously and selected according to the specific purpose, as not all related inferences would be equally reliable. Further advances are expected from improved models and methods for estimating and representing error information in data assimilation systems. Ultimately, data assimilation into coupled climate system components is needed to support ocean and climate services. However, maintaining the infrastructure and expertise for sustained data assimilation remains challenging.
ISSN:1941-1405
1941-0611
DOI:10.1146/annurev-marine-122414-034113