Evaluating the numerical weather prediction air-sea fluxes over the global ocean for ACCESS-G

Abstract

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been providing operational ocean forecasts since 2007. The ocean model is forced by the atmosphere represented by the ACCESS-G Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) system. The performance of the ocean model is linked to the quality of the surface fluxes provided by NWP and used to generate forecasts, and it is important to be able to separate the effects of deficiencies in ocean model physics from atmospheric forcing. Here we use a sparse array of global moored buoys: the OceanSITES climate flux reference stations, to evaluate the performance of ACCESS-G forecasts out to 10-day lead time for heat and mass fluxes.