-Final Report of the Project: Sub-mesoscale Ocean State Estimation in Shelf/Slope Regions Using Variational Data Assimilation to Integrate Ocean Observing System Data: Application to SW06

The long term goal is to develop a robust ocean prediction system for the North East US coast that efficiently exploits all the available observational platforms combined with the Regional Modeling System (ROMS). The system is now operating in real-time and forecasts of the state of the ocean six days in the future are posted daily at www.myroms.org/espresso. The project summarized here supported: (i) development of the prognostic part of the forecast system (the forward model), (ii) implementation of variational data-assimilation of several remotely sensed and in-situ data streams, (iii) validation with hydrographic data from 2006 and 2007. notably that acquired during the ONRs Shallow Water Acoustics 2006 (SW06) field program, and (iv) development of a prototype ensemble prediction system that will allow us to assign error-bars to the realtime deterministic forecast.