The NARVAL Software Toolbox in Support of Ocean Models Skill Assessment at Regional and Coastal Scales

Abstract

The significant advances in high-performance computational resources have boosted the seamless evolution in ocean modelling techniques and numerical efficiency, giving rise to an inventory of operational ocean forecasting systems with ever-increasing complexity. The skill of the Iberia-Biscay-Ireland (IBI) regional ocean forecasting system, implemented within the frame of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS), is routinely evaluated by means of the NARVAL (North Atlantic Regional VALidation) web-based toolbox. Multi-parameter comparisons against observational sources (encompassing both in situ end remote-sensing platforms) are regularly conducted along with model intercomparisons in the overlapping areas. Product quality indicators and skill metrics are automatically computed not only averaged over the entire IBI domain but also over specific sub-regions of particular interest in order to identify strengths and weaknesses of each model. The primary goal of this work is three-fold. Firstly, to provide a flavor of the basic functionalities of NARVAL software package in order to elucidate the accuracy of IBI near real time forecast components (physical, biogeochemical and waves); secondly, to showcase a number of the practical applications of NARVAL; finally, to present the future roadmap to build a new upgraded version of this software package, which will include the quality assessment of multi-year and interim products, the computation of long-term skill metrics or the evaluation of event-oriented multi-model intercomparison exercises. This synergistic approach, based on the integration of numerical models and multi-platform observational networks, should be useful to comprehensively characterize the highly dynamic sea states and the dominant modes of spatio-temporal variability.