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Efficient ensemble forecasting of marine ecology with clustered 1D models and statistical lateral exchange: application to the Red Sea

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Abstract

Forecasting the state of large marine ecosystems is important for many economic and public health applications. However, advanced three-dimensional (3D) ecosystem models, such as the European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (ERSEM), are computationally expensive, especially when implemented within an ensemble data assimilation system requiring several parallel integrations. As an alternative to 3D ecological forecasting systems, we propose to implement a set of regional one-dimensional (1D) water-column ecological models that run at a fraction of the computational cost. The 1D model domains are determined using a Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-based clustering method and satellite chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) data. Regionally averaged Chl-a data is assimilated into the 1D models using the singular evolutive interpolated Kalman (SEIK) filter. To laterally exchange information between subregions and improve the forecasting skills, we introduce a new correction step to the assimilation scheme, in which we assimilate a statistical forecast of future Chl-a observations based on information from neighbouring regions. We apply this approach to the Red Sea and show that the assimilative 1D ecological models can forecast surface Chl-a concentration with high accuracy. The statistical assimilation step further improves the forecasting skill by as much as 50%. This general approach of clustering large marine areas and running several interacting 1D ecological models is very flexible. It allows many combinations of clustering, filtering and regression technics to be used and can be applied to build efficient forecasting systems in other large marine ecosystems.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. This research made use of the resources of the supercomputing laboratory at KAUST. We thank the ESA Ocean Colour CCI Team for providing OC-CCI chlorophyll data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    Denis Dreano & Ibrahim Hoteit

  2. Institute of Oceanography, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Anavyssos, Attica, Greece

    Kostas Tsiaras & George Triantafyllou

  3. Earth Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    Ibrahim Hoteit

Authors
  1. Denis Dreano
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  2. Kostas Tsiaras
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  3. George Triantafyllou
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  4. Ibrahim Hoteit
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Correspondence to Ibrahim Hoteit.

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Responsible Editor: Martin Verlaan

This article is part of the Topical Collection on the 18th Joint Numerical Sea Modelling Group Conference, Oslo, Norway, 10–12 May 2016

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Dreano, D., Tsiaras, K., Triantafyllou, G. et al. Efficient ensemble forecasting of marine ecology with clustered 1D models and statistical lateral exchange: application to the Red Sea. Ocean Dynamics 67, 935–947 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-017-1065-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-017-1065-0

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