Welcome to the North East Atlantic Thematic Portal

The Met Office presently produces daily forecasts on an operational basis both for the deep ocean using the FOAM system, and for the shelf seas using POLCOMS. The FOAM system includes nested models and assimilation of satellite altimeter, surface temperature and profile data. Ecosystem models can be run in the FOAM system and POLCOMS. The main purpose of the work is to transfer to a single system with more potential for collaboration with European partners. In addition, high resolution configurations for the north-east Atlantic will be nested within the "global" system using the old system by Sep 2005 and the NEMO system by Mar 2007. In the last two years of the project, an ecosystem model and an assimilation scheme for ocean colour data will be implemented and assessed.

The systems used at the Met Office to make operational ocean forecasts will be adapted for use with the NEMO ocean model within the first two years of the project. This will involve close liaison with the OPA system team. The codes which must be adapted include those used to generate bathymetries and restart files; to prepare surface fluxes; to prepare observations for assimilation and to assimilate them, and to produce verification statistics on forecasts. In addition the NE Atlantic model configurations required for V.1 and access to boundary data from the global model will be implemented.