Impact of Aquarius and SMAP Sea Surface Salinity Observations on Seasonal Predictions of the 2015 El Nino

Kovach, R ; Hackert, E ; Marshak, J ; Borovikov, Anna Y ; Vernieres, Guilaume

关键词: SALINITY;    OCEAN SURFACE;    EL NINO;    FORECASTING;    SATELLITE OBSERVATION;    AQUARIUS SAC-D;    SMAP (SOIL MOISTURE ACTIVE PASSIVE);   

RP-ID  :  AGU Paper No. AI14A-1557,GSFC-E-DAA-TN52668

学科分类：海洋学与技术

美国|英语

来源: NASA Technical Reports Server

【 摘 要 】

We assess the impact of satellite sea surface salinity (SSS) observations on dynamical ENSO forecasts for the big 2015 El Nino event. From March to June 2015, the availability of two overlapping satellite SSS instruments, Aquarius and SMAP, allows a unique opportunity to compare and contrast coupled forecasts generated with the benefit of these two satellite SSS observation types. Four distinct experiments are presented that include 1) freely evolving model SSS (i.e. no satellite SSS), relaxation to 2) climatological SSS (i.e. WOA13 (World Ocean Atlas 2013) SSS), 3) Aquarius and 4) SMAP initialization. Coupled hindcasts are generated from these initial conditions for March 2015. These forecasts are then validated against observations and evaluated with respect to the observed El Nino development.