United States Navy operational oceanographic nowcast/forecast system

The Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command operates a system of meteorological and oceanographic models for continuous, realtime nowcast/forecast support to United States Department of Defense forces, particularly for Navy/Marine Corps safety of navigation, exploitation of oceanic fronts, and nearshore tactical employment of ships, aircraft and personnel for mine warfare, strike warfare, amphibious landings and special forces operations. The models assimilate conventional and satellite data to support widespread geographical areas with a range of horizontal and vertical resolutions and water column depths. Two supercomputer centers provide necessary computational power to operate this system. This paper focuses on the oceanographic models, which include: thermohaline nowcast, thermodynamic mixed-layer forecast, dynamic circulation, spectral ocean wave, tide/tidal current and sea-ice composition/drift models. This paper describes each model type, current coupling efforts, and plans to couple the oceanographic system with an atmospheric system