Towards a multi-platform assimilative system for North Sea biogeochemistry

Skákala, Jozef, Ford, David, Bruggeman, Jorn, Hull, Tom ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1714-9317, Kaiser, Jan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1553-4043, King, Robert R., Loveday, Benjamin, Palmer, Matthew R., Smyth, Tim, Williams, Charlotte A. J. and Ciavatta, Stefano (2021) Towards a multi-platform assimilative system for North Sea biogeochemistry. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 126 (4). ISSN 2169-9275

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Abstract

Oceanography has entered an era of new observing platforms, such as biogeochemical-Argo floats and gliders, some of which will provide three-dimensional maps of essential ecosystem variables on the North-West European (NWE) Shelf. In a foreseeable future operational centers will use multi-platform assimilation to integrate those valuable data into ecosystem reanalysis and forecast systems. Here we address some important questions related to glider biogeochemical data assimilation (DA) and introduce multi-platform DA in a preoperational model of the NWE Shelf sea ecosystem. We test the impact of the different multi-platform system components (glider vs. satellite, physical vs. biogeochemical) on the simulated biogeochemical variables. To characterize the model performance, we focus on the period around the phytoplankton spring bloom, since the bloom is a major ecosystem driver on the NWE Shelf. We found that the timing and magnitude of the phytoplankton bloom is insensitive to the physical DA, which is explained in the study. To correct the simulated phytoplankton bloom one needs to assimilate chlorophyll observations from glider or satellite Ocean Color (OC) into the model. Although outperformed by the glider chlorophyll assimilation, we show that OC assimilation has mostly desirable impact on the sub-surface chlorophyll. Since the OC assimilation updates chlorophyll only in the mixed layer, the impact on the sub-surface chlorophyll is the result of the model dynamical response to the assimilation. We demonstrate that the multi-platform assimilation combines the advantages of its components and always performs comparably to its best performing component.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: shelf seas,glider observations,marine ecosystems,multi-platform data assimilation,geochemistry and petrology,geophysics,earth and planetary sciences (miscellaneous),space and planetary science,oceanography,sdg 14 - life below water ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1900/1906
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Collaborative Centre for Sustainable Use of the Seas
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 16 Mar 2021 00:49
Last Modified: 20 Mar 2023 10:49
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/79467
DOI: 10.1029/2020JC016649

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