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843
NOUS41 KWBC 052100
PNSWSH
Technical Implementation Notice 12-02
NOAAs National Ocean Service Headquarters Washington DC
Relayed by National Weather Service Washington DC
400 PM EST Thu Jan 5 2011
To: Subscribers:
-Family of Services
-NOAA Weather Wire Service
-Emergency Managers Weather Information Network
-NOAAPORT
Other NWS and NOS partners and employees
From: Peter Stone
Chief, Oceanographic Division
NOS Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and
Services (CO-OPS)
Subject: Implementation of National Ocean Services new
Oceanographic Forecast Modeling System for Northern
Gulf of Mexico, Effective March 29, 2012
Effective March 29, 2012 beginning at 1500 Coordinated Universal
Time (UTC), 10:00 AM EST, the National Ocean Service Northern
Gulf of Mexico Operational Forecast System (NGOFS) will be
implemented on NOAAs Central Computer System (CCS) operated by
NCEP Central Operations (NCO). NGOFS will now provide users with
nowcasts (analyses of near present) and forecast guidance of the
three-dimensional physical conditions of the northern Gulf of
Mexico. The nowcasts will include surface water levels and 3-D
water currents, water temperature, and salinity out to 48 hours.
As its core ocean prediction model, NGOFS uses the Finite Volume
Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM) developed jointly by the University
of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution. FVCOM is a prognostic, unstructured-grid, finite-
volume, free-surface, 3-D primitive equation, coastal ocean
model with a horizontal grid comprised of unstructured
triangular cells in which the irregular bottom is presented
using generalized terrain-following coordinates.
The NGOFS grid consists of 91652 nodes and 176545 elements. The
grid includes northern Gulf of Mexico shelf waters and bays.
Grid resolution ranges from 10 km on the open ocean boundary to
approximately 600 m near the coast, indicating the flexibility
of the grid size based on bathymetry from the deep ocean to the
coast. Additionally, the higher resolution along the
navigational channels within bays, from approximately 200 m to
300 m, provides detailed current features.
NGOFS operates within the NOS Coastal Ocean Modeling Framework
(COMF) and has four daily nowcast and forecast cycles at 0, 6,
12, and 18 UTC.
For the NGOFS nowcast cycle, the meteorological forcing is
provided by the nested, high resolution (4 km) NCEP North
American Mesoscale (NAM) weather prediction model.
River discharge is estimated using near-real-time observations
from U.S. Geological Survey river gauges.
Oceanographic conditions of subtidal water levels, currents,
water temperature and salinity on the NGOFS lateral open
boundary on the shelf are estimated based on forecast guidance
from the Navy Coast Ocean Model (NCOM) and adjusted by real-time
observations at NOS water level gauges.
Tides are derived from the Advanced CIRCulation Model (ADCIRC)
ec2001 tide database. Subtidal water level forecasts from NWS
Extra-Tropical Storm Surge (ETSS) Model are used as a backup if
NCOM is not available.
For the NGOFS forecast cycle, the meteorological forcing is
provided by the nested, high resolution (4 km) NCEP North
American Mesoscale (NAM) weather prediction model.
River discharge is estimated by persistence of the most recent
near-real-time observations from U.S. Geological Survey river
gauges.
Oceanographic conditions of subtidal water levels, currents,
water temperature and salinity on NGOFS lateral open boundary
on the shelf are estimated based on forecast guidance from NCOM.
Tides are derived from the Advanced CIRCulation Model (ADCIRC)
ec2001 tide database. Subtidal water level forecasts from NWS
Extra-Tropical Storm Surge (ETSS) Model are used as a backup if
NCOM is not available.
Gridded and point forecast guidance from NGOFS will be available
in netCDF files on the NCEP server at NOAAs Web Operations
Centers (WOC) (ftpprd.ncep.noaa.gov) in the directory
/pub/data/nccfs/com/nos/prod/ngofs.yyyymmdd
at NOS/CO-OPS OPeNDAP server
http://opendap.co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/netcdf/
and at CO-OPS THREDDS server
http://opendap.co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/thredds/catalog.html
NGOFS output is displayed on the CO-OPS web page at
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov
Additional information about NGOFS can be found at
http://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/models.html
NGOFS predictions are used by commercial and recreational
mariners and fishermen, emergency managers, search and rescue
operations, and NWS marine weather forecasters. The development
and implementation of NGOFS was a joint project of the
NOS/Office of Coast Survey (OCS), the NOS/Center for Operational
Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS), NWS/NCEP/NCO and
the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. NGOFS is monitored
24 x 7 by both NCO and CO-OPS Continuous Real-Time Monitoring
System (CORMS) personnel.
If you have any questions concerning these changes, please
contact:
Dr. Aijun Zhang
NOS/CO-OPS
Silver Spring, MD
Aijun.Zhang@xxxxxxxx
or
Dr. Frank Aikman
Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch
Coast Survey Development Laboratory
NOAA/NOS/Office of Coast Survey
Silver Spring, MD
Frank.Aikman@xxxxxxxx
For questions regarding the dataflow aspects with respect to the
NCEP server at the WOC, please contact:
Rebecca Cosgrove
NCEP/NCO Dataflow Team
Camp Springs, MD
ncep.list.pmb-dataflow@xxxxxxxx
For questions on how to access NGOFS digital products from CO-
OPS servers please contact:
Rich Bourgerie
NOS/CO-OPS/Data Monitoring& Assessment Team
Silver Spring, MD
tide.prediction@xxxxxxxx
National Technical Implementation Notices are online at:
http://www.weather.gov/om/notif.htm
$$
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