J-SCOPE: Seasonal Coastal Ocean Forecasts for Washington and Oregon

JISAO's Seasonal Coastal Ocean Prediction of the Ecosystem provides experimental six- to nine-month forecasts for the Washington and Oregon coasts. The forecasts are generated monthly using a high-resolution Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) at roughly 1.5 km resolution, downscaled from NOAA's Climate Forecast System. NOAA funds this project, which predicts properties like sea-surface temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and plankton distributions.

Use Cases

• Predicting sardine and hake habitat suitability based on forecasted ocean properties.
• Modeling coastal acidification impacts using forecasted pH and carbon variables.
• Analyzing seasonal upwelling strength and its effect on plankton distributions.
• Assessing hypoxia risk for marine ecosystems using forecasted dissolved oxygen concentration.
• Validating and improving regional ocean models with ensemble forecast data.

Strengths

• Forecasts are produced with a high-resolution model at roughly 1.5 km spatial resolution.
• Provides ensemble forecasts from three model runs to indicate relative uncertainty.
• Includes a state-of-the-art biogeochemical module and is forced with real river and tidal data.
• Updates are provided on a monthly basis with forecasts initialized in January, April, and September annually.

Limitations

• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The description notes forecasts are 'experimental', indicating they are for research and evaluation.

Provenance

Source

NOAA, presented by NANOOS and developed by JISAO and the University of Washington's Coastal Modeling Group.

Collection Method

Dynamical downscaling of NOAA's Climate Forecast System (CFS) using a high-resolution Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) with biogeochemical modules.

Time Range

Forecasts cover six- to nine-month periods.

Freshness

Updates on a monthly basis.

Geography

Cascadia domain covering the Washington and Oregon coasts.