Advancing Marine Biogeochemical and Ecosystem Reanalyses and Forecasts as Tools for Monitoring and Managing Ecosystem Health

Abstract

Ocean ecosystems are subject to a multitude of stressors, including changes in ocean physics and biogeochemistry, and direct anthropogenic influences. Implementation of protective and adaptive measures for ocean ecosystems requires a combination of ocean observations with analysis and prediction tools. These can guide assessments of the current state of ocean ecosystems, elucidate ongoing trends and shifts, and anticipate impacts of climate change and management policies. Analysis and prediction tools are defined here as ocean circulation models that are coupled to biogeochemical or ecological models. The range of potential applications for these systems is broad, ranging from reanalyses for the assessment of past and current states, and short-term and seasonal forecasts, to scenario simulations including climate change projections. The objectives of this article are to illustrate current capabilities with regard to the three types of applications, and to discuss the challenges and opportunities. Representative examples of global and regional systems are described with particular emphasis on those in operational or pre-operational use. With regard to the benefits and challenges, similar considerations apply to biogeochemical and ecological prediction systems as do to physical systems. However, at present there are at least two major differences: (1) biogeochemical observation streams are much sparser than physical streams presenting a significant hinderance, and (2) biogeochemical and ecological models are largely unconstrained because of insufficient observations. Expansion of biogeochemical and ecological observation systems will allow for significant advances in the development and application of analysis and prediction tools for ocean biogeochemistry and ecosystems, with multiple societal benefits.

Observational Needs Supporting Marine Ecosystems Modeling and Forecasting: From the Global Ocean to Regional and Coastal Systems

“…While these examples highlight the uniqueness of the physical processes, and associated observational priorities, specific to each region, they also provide insights on observations needed for similar applications (e.g., regional modeling and data assimilation, specification of lateral boundary conditions and surface forcing, modeling and forecasting in eastern boundary upwelling systems) in other areas of the global ocean. The present study complements other reviews (e.g., Fennel et al, 2019) that provide examples of modeling/forecasting efforts from other regions around the world.…”

“…The feasibility of assimilating BGC-Argo float data in oceanic biogeochemical models has been demonstrated in a model of the Mediterranean Sea, with significant improvements in the phytoplankton dynamics over the entire water column (Cossarini et al, 2018). Additional information and discussion of biogeochemical data assimilation is presented in Fennel et al (2019).…”

Evaluation of nonidentical versus identical twin approaches for observation impact assessments: an ensemble-Kalman-filter-based ocean assimilation application for the Gulf of Mexico

“…Code and data availability. The ROMS model code can be accessed at http://www.myroms.com (Haidvogel et al, 2008) (last access: 16 June 2016). ROMS data assimilation model outputs are publicly available through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information & Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) at https://doi.org/10.7266/n7-zc10-mz49 (Yu et al, 2018b).…”

“…The model is configured using the Regional Ocean Modelling System (Haidvogel et al, 2008; ROMS, http:// myroms.org, last access: 16 June 2016) for the GOM (Fig. 1a).…”

Assessing the role and consistency of satellite observation products in global physical-biogeochemical ocean reanalysis

“…Physical ocean reanalyses are increasingly used for climate studies (Balmaseda et al, 2015;Storto et al, 2019), and physicalbiogeochemical reanalyses assimilating ocean colour data on its own are starting to be developed (Ciavatta et al, 2016;Ford and Barciela, 2017;Fennel et al, 2019). It is not yet routine though to combine the assimilation of physics and biogeochemistry in a single ocean reanalysis.…”