JISAO’s Seasonal Coastal Ocean Prediction Experiment (J-SCOPE) represents a collaborative project involving scientists at JISAO and NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC). Quantitative forecasts have begun to be produced of physical, chemical and biological (through lower-trophic levels) ocean properties on time horizons of ~9 months. These forecasts are tailored towards NOAA and other operational stakeholders. They are based on numerical ocean model simulations using a high-resolution (grid spacing ~3 km) version of the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) with a component that accounts for nutrient and plankton distributions. The initial and boundary conditions for the ROMS simulations are being provided by a global coupled atmosphere-ocean model, the Coupled Forecast System (CFS), that is currently being run operationally by NOAA/NCEP/CPC for seasonal weather prediction. The focus is on specific properties crucial to the ecosystem including coastal upwelling, currents and trajectories of water parcels, mixed layer depths, oxygen concentrations, pH, and plankton community types.
