Improving forecasts of individual ocean eddies using feature mapping

Abstract

Marine industries, war fighters, and world leaders demand accurate maps of ocean properties to underpin tactical and strategic decisions. Oceanographers have approached this challenge by borrowing mapping techniques from weather forecasters. However, compared to the atmosphere, the spatial scales of the ocean are small, and ocean properties are vastly under-sampled. Not surprisingly, despite decades of dedicated effort, the quality of maps of under-sea conditions remains poor. Feature mapping is a new approach to this problem that treats every ocean eddy individually. It strictly limits the influence of each observation to the oceanographic feature that it directly observes. Resulting maps are precise and realistic and may revolutionise ocean forecasting.