Recent Updates on Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean-Ice-Wave Model at NOAA EMC

Denise Worthen1, Jessica Meixner2, Bin Li3,4, Jiande Wang4, Lydia B Stefanova3,4, Avichal Mehra5, Suranjana Saha3, Vijay Tallapragada6, Brandon G Reichl7, Stephen Griffies8, Alistair Adcroft9 and Robert Hallberg7, (1)IMSG/National Centers For Environmental Prediction-Environmental Modeling Center, College Park, MD, United States, (2)National Centers For Environmental Prediction-Environmental Modeling Center, College Park, United States, (3)National Centers For Environmental Prediction-Environmental Modeling Center, College Park, MD, United States, (4)IMSG at NOAA/NWS/NCEP/EMC, College Park, MD, United States, (5)NOAA NWS NCEP Environmental Modeling Center, College Park, United States, (6)NOAA/NCEP/EMC, College Park, United States, (7)NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, United States, (8)Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, United States, (9)Princeton University, Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton, NJ, United States
Abstract:
The Unified Forecast System (UFS) is a community based coupled modeling system with applications from regional to global and weather to seasonal timescales. Here we focus on the subseasonal-to-seasonal application of the UFS, which is a coupled atmosphere-ocean- ice-wave model which will first be targeted for operational implementation in GEFS at NCEP in FY2023. This global coupled model is comprised of the Finite Volume Cubed Sphere (FV3) dynamical core with GFS physics for the atmosphere, the Modular Ocean Model (MOM6), the Los Alamos Sea Ice Model (CICE) and the WAVEWATCH III (WW3) wave model. The coupled model driver is the NOAA Environmental Modeling System (NEMS) which uses the National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC) layer on top of ESMF for the coupling infrastructure.

As a part of this model development several benchmark studies have been conducted and more are ongoing. Each benchmark initializes 35 day free-forecasts from the first and fifteenth of every month from 2012-2018. Initial benchmarks have shown comparable skills to CFSR and increased skill at predicting ice extent in the polar regions. Here we will discuss the current status of the coupled system and recent benchmark results with a focus on the air-sea interactions. This will include benchmarks with and without wave coupling to show the impact of including sea-state dependent wave-driven Langmuir mixing in the ocean.

Back to: Fluxes and Physical Processes Near the Air-Sea Interface: Observations and Modeling (Cosponsored by the AMS Committee on Air-Sea Interaction) V Posters