The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through its participation in the National Oceanographic Partnership Program supported development of a nowcast/forecast system for the Gulf of Mexico. Further United States Navy support through the Naval Oceanographic Office as part of the Northern Gulf of Mexico Littoral Initiative demonstrated the feasiblity of the system to provide regional modeling boundary conditions. To further this effort, NOS worked with private industry to transfer this system to NOS.

Figure 2 - Bathymetry in Gulf of Mexico and Straits of Florida.

The system will be evaluated on an experimental basis for water levels and surface currents. The model grid and bathymetry encompasses the entire Gulf of Mexico and the Straits of Florida. The system is used to provide Gulf-wide water level and current forecasts as well as to directly provide water levels, density, and turbulence quantities to the NOS regional forecasts systems in Galveston Bay and Tampa Bay. Experimental short term 48 hr forecasts of water level, currents, salinity, and temperature are being performed on a daily basis. The forecasts are driven by: 1) Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Prediction System (COAMPS) winds (1-hr) and atmospheric pressure (3-hr) fields, 2) persistence of observed streamflow (United States Geological Survey and Army Corps of Engineers). The system is run in nowcast or update mode each day to initiate each experimental forecast by assimilating USN Modular Ocean Data Acquisition System (MODAS) salinity and temperature fields as well as SSH. Once per week long term 90 day forecasts are performed to predict Loop Current evolution. The long range forecasts are initiated from the latest short-term update and use climatological river inflows.