Super-Regional Modeling Testbed to
Improve Forecasts of Environmental Processes
for the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Coasts
Wright, L.D.; Signell, R.; Friedrichs, C.; Harding, J.; Howlett, E.; Levin, D.; Luettich, R.;
and Smith, E.
15 February 2011
ASLO 2011 Aquatic Sciences Meeting
S41 Ecological Forecasting: Progress, Challenges and Prospects
Outline
• Southeastern Universities Research Assn (SURA)
• Motivation for the Testbed: Improving prediction of
environmental processes
• Design of this Testbed
• Year 1 Products
• Future work
SURA’s Mission:
To advance nuclear physics, information technology, and
facilitate better understanding of coastal and environmental
phenomena that impact our lives.
Outline
• Southeastern Universities Research Assn (SURA)
• Motivation for the testbed: Improving prediction of
environmental processes
• Design of this testbed
• Year 1 products
• Future work
Improving Forecasts of Coastal
Environmental Processes
• Factors:
– open boundary conditions,
– surface and river forcing conditions,
– enhanced physics,
– adjustable parameters,
– data assimilation, numerics, amount of data assimilated,
– skill of modelers(!),
– vertical and horizontal resolution,
– coupling to wave and met models.
• “Which model is better?” is not the right question.
– What factors in the simulation resulted in a better solution?
– How much better?
– At what cost?
Defining Improvement
• To measure improvement for environmental processes, we
need to define skill metrics for specific environmental
processes and often for specific region:
•Inundation ✔
•Hypoxia ✔
•Search and rescue
•Deep oil spills
•Navigation
•Harmful algal blooms
•Diver operations
•Alternative energy citing
•Beach erosion
•Regional impact of climate
change
-- ALL REQUIRE DIFFERENT SKILL METRICS!
Operational centers will directly benefit from the community’s
help in this process – too broad for NOAA and NAVY!
A Common Cyberinfrastructure for Model Data
The ocean community needs a common cyberinfrastructure to
access, analyze and display data from the different models:
each model community currently has their own standards and
toolsets.
Structured Grids
Unstructured Grid
10 nodes
5x5
6x3
Variety of
Stretched
Vertical
Coordinates
Outline
• Southeastern Universities Research Assn (SURA)
• Motivation for the testbed: improving prediction of
environmental processes
• Design of this testbed
• Year 1 products
• Future work
A Testbed Framework for Coastal Ocean Models
• Build a common infrastructure to enable access, analysis and
visualization of all coastal ocean model data produced by NOAA,
NAVY and IOOS
• Develop skill metrics and assess models in three different regions
and dynamical regimes, to ensure a robust and powerful
infrastructure
• Identify factors that could be transitioned to operations
• Build stronger relationships between academia and operational
centers through collaboration
7 members
Testbed
Testbed
Management
Testbed
Teams
Don Wright, Project PI
Liz Smith, SURA
Doug Levin, Program Mgr
“Management”
Testbed
Advisory/Evaluation
Group
Rich Signell, USGS
25 members
Cyber
Infrastructure
Eoin Howlett, ASA
21 members
20 members
Estuarine Hypoxia
Shelf Hypoxia
Chesapeake Bay
Gulf of Mexico
Carl Friedrichs, VIMS
John Harding, MSU
24 members
Coastal
ShelfInundation
Hypoxia
Gulf
andofEast
Coast
Gulf
Mexico
Shelf
Hypoxia
Rickof
Luettich,
UNC-CH
Gulf
Mexico
Cyberinfrastructure
All Regions – All Teams
 Extending CI from OGC, Unidata and
others (NOAA DMIT, USGS CDI) to support
unstructured grids, and add functionality
 Web Access via OpenDAP w/CF
 Unidata Common Data Model/NetCDF
Java Library API
Distributed search capability
Browser based map viewer (WMS)
Toolbox for scientific desktop analysis
All components standards-based!
Mapping services and browse application
Search services
Analyze in scientific desktop application
Shelf Hypoxia Gulf of Mexico
Hydrodynamic & biogeochemical hindcast comparisons of hypoxia models (stand alone)
coupled to 3 different Gulf of Mexico hydrodynamics models
Evaluation of two shelf hypoxia formulations (NOAA & EPA)
ROMS Surface and bottom water oxygen
By R. Hetland, K. Fennel and C. Harris
mmol O2 m-3
Estuarine Hypoxia Chesapeake Bay
Stratification (dS/Dz)
1. Estuary:
– 5 Hydrodynamic models
– 3 Biological (DO) models
– 2004 data from 28 CBP stations
– Comparing T, S, max (dS/dz), DO via
target diagrams
2. Shelf: OBCs 5 hydrodynamic models
Dissolved Oxygen
Models doing better on oxygen than stratification!
(by M. Friedrichs)
Inundation
Extra-tropical – Gulf of Maine
Tropical – Gulf of Mexico
Extratropical Grid for Scituate, MA
4 models: 3 unstructured grid +1 structured grid;
Coupled wave-storm surge-inundation (total water
level)
Consistent forcing, validation and skill assessment
using existing IMEDS tool,
Extensive observational data sets for historical
storms Ike, Rita and Gustav in standard formats,
SURA has provided supercomputer resources.
Tropical Grids for Galveston Bay
Inundation
Extra-tropical – GulfInteractive
of Maine Modeling Evaluation and Diagnostic Systems
Tropical – Gulf of Mexico
- 4 models: 3 unstructured grid +1 structured grid
- Coupled wave-storm surge-inundation (TWL)
- Consistent forcing, validation and skill assessment
using existing IMEDS tool
-Extensive observational data sets for historical
storms Ike, Rita and Gustav in standard formats
-SURA has provided supercomputer resources
Tropical Grids for Galveston Bay
http://testbed.sura.org
Testbed Year 1 Products
•
•
•
•
Foundation of a cyberinfrastructure framework for
search, access and display of all NOAA, NAVY and
IOOS model data, via browser and scientific desktop
application
Skill metrics and identification of key performance
factors and cost for three important dynamical
regimes and environmental issues
Concept of Operations for transition from research
to operations
Improved communication between research and
operations
Future Work for the Testbed
•
Expand to more regions and problems
•
Examine more factors (e.g. data assimilation)
•
Build out the cyberinfrastructure
•
Conduct training in the community
•
Sustaining future development