Identification

Title

Toward an uncertainty budget for a coastal ocean model

Abstract

Estimates of three components of an uncertainty budget for a coastal ocean model in a wind-forced regime are made based on numerical simulations. The budget components behave differently in the shelf regime, inshore of the 200-m isobath, and the slope-interior regime, between the 200-m isobath and a fixed longitude (126°W) that is roughly 150 km offshore. The first of the three budget components is an estimate of the uncertainty in the ocean state given only a known history of wind stress forcing, with errors in the wind forcing estimated from differences between operational analyses. It is found that, over the continental shelf, the response to wind forcing is sufficiently strong and deterministic that significant skill in estimating shelf circulation can be achieved with knowledge only of the wind forcing, and no ocean data, for wind fields with these estimated errors. The second involves initial condition error and its influence on uncertainty, including both error growth with time from well-known initial conditions and error decay with time from poorly known initial conditions but with well-known wind forcing. The third component is that of boundary condition error and its influence on the interior solutions, including the dependence of that influence on the specific location along the boundary of the boundary condition error. Boundary condition errors with amplitude comparable to the root-mean-square variability at the boundary lead eventually to errors equal to the root-mean-square variability in the slope-interior regime, and somewhat smaller errors in the shelf regime. Covariance estimates based on differences of the wind-forced solutions from the ensemble mean are not dramatically different from those based on the full fields, and do not show strong state dependence.

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document

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http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7pn967x

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Dataset language

eng

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geoscientificInformation

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publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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publication

effective date

2011-03-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2011 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

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pointOfContact

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