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.

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 2011ASLO 2011 Aquatic Sciences Meeting

S41 Ecological Forecasting: Progress, Challenges and Prospects

• Southeastern Universities Research Assn (SURA)

• Motivation for the Testbed: Improving prediction of environmental processes

• Design of this Testbed

• Year 1 Products

• Future work

Outline

SURA’s Mission: To advance nuclear physics, information technology, and

facilitate better understanding of coastal and environmental phenomena that impact our lives.

• Southeastern Universities Research Assn (SURA)

• Motivation for the testbed: Improving prediction of environmental processes

• Design of this testbed

• Year 1 products

• Future work

Outline

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!

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.

A Common Cyberinfrastructure for Model Data

Structured Grids Unstructured Grid

5x5

6x3

10 nodes

Variety of StretchedVertical Coordinates

• Southeastern Universities Research Assn (SURA)

• Motivation for the testbed: improving prediction of environmental processes

• Design of this testbed

• Year 1 products

• Future work

Outline

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

Testbed “Management”

25 members

Testbed Management

Don Wright, Project PILiz Smith, SURADoug Levin, Program Mgr

Testbed Advisory/Evaluation

Group

Rich Signell, USGS

7 members

Testbed Teams

Estuarine HypoxiaChesapeake Bay

Carl Friedrichs, VIMS

21 members

Shelf HypoxiaGulf of Mexico

John Harding, MSU

Shelf HypoxiaGulf of Mexico

Shelf HypoxiaGulf of Mexico

Coastal InundationGulf and East CoastRick Luettich, UNC-CH

Cyber Infrastructure

Eoin Howlett, ASA

20 members 24 members

CyberinfrastructureAll 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!

Search services

Mapping services and browse application

Analyze in scientific desktop application

Shelf Hypoxia Gulf of MexicoHydrodynamic & biogeochemical hindcast comparisons of hypoxia models (stand alone) coupled to 3 different Gulf of Mexico hydrodynamics modelsEvaluation of two shelf hypoxia formulations (NOAA & EPA)

Shelf Hypoxia Gulf of MexicoHydrodynamic & biogeochemical hindcast comparisons of hypoxia models (stand alone) coupled to 3 different Gulf of Mexico hydrodynamics modelsEvaluation of two shelf hypoxia formulations (NOAA & EPA)

ROMS Surface and bottom water oxygen

mmol O2 m-3

By R. Hetland, K. Fennel and C. Harris

Estuarine Hypoxia Chesapeake Bay

1. Estuary:– 5 Hydrodynamic models– 3 Biological (DO) models– 2004 data from 28 CBP stations– Comparing T, S, max (dS/dz), DO via target diagrams2. Shelf: OBCs 5 hydrodynamic models

Estuarine Hypoxia Chesapeake Bay

1. Estuary:– 5 Hydrodynamic models– 3 Biological (DO) models– 2004 data from 28 CBP stations– Comparing T, S, max (dS/dz), DO via target diagrams2. Shelf: OBCs 5 hydrodynamic models

Models doing better on oxygen than stratification!(by M. Friedrichs)

Stratification (dS/Dz)

Dissolved Oxygen

Inundation Extra-tropical – Gulf of MaineTropical – Gulf of Mexico

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.

Inundation Extra-tropical – Gulf of MaineTropical – Gulf of Mexico

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.

Extratropical Grid for Scituate, MA

Tropical Grids for Galveston Bay

Inundation Extra-tropical – Gulf of MaineTropical – 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

Inundation Extra-tropical – Gulf of MaineTropical – 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

Interactive Modeling Evaluation and Diagnostic Systems

http://testbed.sura.org

• 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

Testbed Year 1 Products

• 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

Future Work for the Testbed