Bluelink: Large-To-Coastal Scale Operational Oceanography in the Southern Hemisphere

Abstract

In 2003, the Australian Government, through the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), Royal Australian Navy and CSIRO, initiated BLUElink — Ocean Forecasting Australia, a project to deliver operational short-range ocean forecasts for the Asian-Australian region by 2006. Global advances in technologies necessary to observe and simulate the oceans have provided scientists at CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology with the tools to deliver near real-time information on ocean behaviour. Central to BLUElink is the development of a global and nested ocean prediction system. The BLUElink initiative centres on ocean prediction and analysis, and forecasting of day-to-day variations in ocean currents and temperatures around Australia. Ocean forecasts will be updated to include the latest changes in the ocean state and weather systems, particularly extreme conditions such as from tropical cyclones. The aim of the project is to generate ocean charts for marine users similar to weather forecast charts available to the rest of the community. The BLUElink system will provide information on coastal and open-ocean currents, surface and subsurface ocean properties, products that impact and are linked to maritime and commercial operations, defence applications, safety-at-sea, marine environmental sustainability, and regional and global climate. CSIRO is currently developing a high-resolution, coupled atmosphere-ocean model predicting out to 3 days which has been specifically designed for coastal and shelf applications. Standard products of the coastal forecasting system will be surface winds and sea-surface height, and 3-dimensional fields of ocean temperature, salinity and currents.