Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Bureau supports the Global Assimilation and Prediction System 5 (GASP)
and the Limited Area Prediction System 6 for the Australian region.
3. Operational Ocean Prediction System
The Ocean Model Analysis and Prediction System (OceanMAPS) is based
on the Ocean Forecast Australia Model (OFAM), 7 the BLUElink > Ocean
Data Assimilation System (BODAS), 8 a data management system and
enhanced surface winds from NWP and high-resolution SST products. The
system is implemented at the Bureau/CSIRO High Performance Comput-
ing and Communications Centre (HPCCC) which is presently based on the
NEC SX6 machine.
3.1. Ocean model development
The Australian scientific community has a long and on-going relationship
with Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory to adapt the Modular Ocean
Model (MOM) software for Australian climate research applications. MOM
Version4 9 is optimised for a scalable parallel architecture. This presents
issues for performance of the software on alternative architectures such as
the parallel vector NEC SX6 at the HPCCC. OFAM includes optimisation
for the NEC SX6 with excellent results.
The OFAM grid has been designed as a global model, to avoid com-
plexities associated with open boundary conditions. The Australian region
has 10 km horizontal resolution, which resolves mesoscale ocean variability.
In order to minimise the costs of the model, the grid employs lower resolu-
tions outside the Australian region as shown in Fig. 1, where the white dots
Fig. 1. Ocean Forecast Australia Model horizontal grid. Water cells are colored accord-
ing the depth of bathymetry, every 10th grid point is shown as a white dot.
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