OOFɛ: A Python engine for automating regional and coastal ocean forecasts

Coastal and regional ocean forecasts can be currently performed on a daily basis due to the advances in numerical techniques and in computational resources. Maintenance of routine forecasts is a demanding task from the point of view of software engineering since it involves a number of new additional tasks difficult to code efficiently in the compiled languages in which ocean models are written. In this contribution, we present a set of free, open-source, portable and fast modules named OOF3 e Operational Ocean Forecast Python Engine that provide a way to cope with the demanding requirements of routine execution of a regional ocean model written in a compiled language (namely the Regional Ocean Modelling System, ROMS, developed in Fortran) and that make the forecast process possible and fully automatic and robust. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.