Verification of Ocean Currents in Global Ocean Forecast Systems Using Novel Observations

This study presents the verification of ocean currents from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's operational forecasting system, OceanMAPS, using data from the global drifters. We have explored innovative methods of consensus filtering of observations, inclusion of wave-driven Stokes drift, and Lagrangian diagnostics in global ocean currents verification. To expand global coverage, we explore novel ocean observing systems to improve the verification including the drifting fish-aggregating-devices (FADs) and the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. Verification results show that the operational OceanMAPS and its upcoming upgrades continue to improve their performance against the global drifter observations. The FADs currents are highly correlated with those from global drifters and with OceanMAPS currents demonstrating FADs to be a valuable observation source for verifying ocean currents in global models. The preliminary analysis against SWOT geostrophic currents shows good agreement with OceanMAPS model analysis data.