Development and Evolution of Operational Forecast Systems for the Coastal and Estuarine Environment in NOAA's National Ocean Service

User-based skill assessment techniques for operational hydrodynamic forecast systems

“…T he National Ocean Service (NOS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been at the forefront in developing, implementing and maintaining operational oceanographic observing systems (ie, the Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System (PORTS) and the National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON)) and operational coastal ocean forecasting systems. 1,2 NOS presently focuses on developing estuarine and coastal hydrodynamic models, driven by real-time in-situ and remote data and the outputs of operational weather forecast models to produce nowcasts and short-term forecasts of water levels, currents, temperature and salinity in order to support NOS's mission to promote safe and efficient navigation (eg, forecast water level fields for under-keel clearance), to assist in emergency response, such as circulation and density fields for oil spill trajectory forecasts, and other NOS programmes including marine geospatial and ecological applications. 3 There are currently nine water bodies in which NOS operational forecast systems (OFS) are functioning (Fig 1), including Chesapeake Bay, the Port of New York and New Jersey, Galveston Bay, the St Johns River, and the five Great Lakes.…”

Real‐Time Oceanographic Data: From Safety to Science

“…Operational circulation models [Aikman et al, 2008] that include PORTS data in their boundary conditions have been implemented by NOAA for 13 U.S. harbors (http:// tidesandcurrents .noaa .gov/ models .html). These models provide maps of marine variables such as currents, water temperature, salinity, and winds across their domains in near real time as well as 48 hours into the future.…”