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Development of a new operational system for monitoring and forecasting coastal and open-ocean states around Japan

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Abstract

We developed a new system to monitor and forecast coastal and open-ocean states around Japan for operational use by the Japan Meteorological Agency. The system consists of an eddy-resolving analysis model based on four-dimensional variational assimilation and a high (2-km) resolution forecast model covering Japanese coastal areas that incorporates an initialization scheme with temporal and spatial filtering. Assimilation and forecast experiments were performed for 2008 to 2017, and the results were validated against various observation datasets. The assimilation results captured well the observed variability in sea surface temperature, coastal sea level, volume transport, and sea ice. Furthermore, the volume budget for the Japan Sea was significantly improved by the use of the 2-km resolution forecast model compared with the 10-km resolution analysis model. The forecast results indicate that this system has a predictive limit longer than 1 month in many areas, including in the Kuroshio current area south of Japan and the southern Japan Sea. In the forecast results of case studies, the 2017 Kuroshio large meander was well predicted, and warm water intrusions accompanying Kuroshio path variations south of Japan were also successfully reproduced. Sea ice forecasts for the Sea of Okhotsk largely captured the evolution of sea ice in late winter, but sea ice in early winter included relatively large errors. This system has high potential to meet operational requirements for monitoring and forecasting ocean phenomena at both meso- and coastal scales.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the members of the Global Environment and Marine Department of Japan Meteorological Agency for fruitful discussions and helpful comments. Thanks are extended to two anonymous reviewers for their variable comments that greatly helped improve an early version of the manuscript. In situ temperature and salinity profiles were obtained from the World Ocean Database (WOD: ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/WOD/) and the Global Temperature-Salinity Profile Program (GTSPP: ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/gtspp) websites. The delayed-mode altimeter products were produced and distributed by the Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic data (AVISO) and the Copernicus Marine and Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). The tide gauge data, Merged Satellite and In situ Data Global Daily SST (MGDSST), Himawari-SST, near-real-time altimeter datasets, and in situ temperature and salinity profiles obtained operationally were provided from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). Sea level pressure data was obtained from the JMA’s website. The station temperature data is acquired from acquired from the real-time marine information acquisition and analysis system operated by Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency and the Online Water Quality Monitoring System in Osaka Bay.

Funding

This work was funded by Meteorological Research Institute. This study was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 16H02226 and 19K03978, Research Program on Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST JPMJCR1681) of MEXT, and the Joint Research Program of the Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University (18S0002 and 19S0003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency, 1-1 Nagamine, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0052, Japan

    Nariaki Hirose, Norihisa Usui, Kei Sakamoto, Hiroyuki Tsujino, Goro Yamanaka, Hideyuki Nakano, Shogo Urakawa, Takahiro Toyoda, Yosuke Fujii & Nadao Kohno

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  1. Nariaki Hirose
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  2. Norihisa Usui
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  3. Kei Sakamoto
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  4. Hiroyuki Tsujino
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  5. Goro Yamanaka
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  6. Hideyuki Nakano
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  7. Shogo Urakawa
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  8. Takahiro Toyoda
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  9. Yosuke Fujii
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  10. Nadao Kohno
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Correspondence to Nariaki Hirose.

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Responsible Editor: Emil Vassilev Stanev

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Coastal Ocean Forecasting Science supported by the GODAE OceanView Coastal Oceans and Shelf Seas Task Team (COSS-TT) - Part II

Appendix: Abbreviations

Appendix: Abbreviations

Abbreviations used frequently in this paper are summarized as follows:

AVISO:

Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic data

CMEMS:

Copernicus Marine and Environment Monitoring Service

IAU:

Increment analysis updates

IB:

Inverted barometer

JMA:

Japan Meteorological Agency

KLM:

Kuroshio large meander

MGDSST:

Merged satellite and in situ global daily sea surface temperature

MRI:

Meteorological Research Institute

nNLM:

Nearshore nonlarge meander path

oNLM:

Offshore nonlarge meander path

SDH:

Surface dynamic height

SIC:

Sea ice concentration

SLA:

Sea level anomaly

SLD:

Sea level difference

SSH:

Sea surface height

SST:

Sea surface temperature

tLM:

Typical large meander path

T–S:

Temperature and salinity

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Hirose, N., Usui, N., Sakamoto, K. et al. Development of a new operational system for monitoring and forecasting coastal and open-ocean states around Japan. Ocean Dynamics 69, 1333–1357 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-019-01306-x

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