NOUS41 KWBC 111505

PNSWSH

Service Change Notice 17-108

National Ocean Service Headquarters Silver Spring, MD

Related by National Weather Service Washington DC

305 PM EDT Wed Oct 11 2017

To: Subscribers:

-NOAA Weather Wire Service

-Emergency Managers Weather Information Network

-NOAAPORT

Other NWS and NOS partners and NWS and NOS employees

From: Patrick Burke

Chief, Oceanographic Division

NOS Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and

Services (CO-OPS)

Subject: Implementation of new Oceanographic Forecast Modeling

System for the Gulf of Maine Effective

December 19, 2017

Effective December 19, 2017, beginning at 1800 Coordinated

Universal Time (UTC) (0300 PM EST), the National Ocean Service

Gulf of Maine Operational Forecast System (GoMOFS) will be

implemented on NOAA's Weather Climate Operational Supercomputing

System (WCOSS) operated by National Centers for Environmental

Prediction (NCEP) Central Operations (NCO). GoMOFS will provide

users with nowcasts (analyses of near present) and forecast

guidance of the three-dimensional physical conditions of the

Gulf of Maine, including surface water levels and 3-D water

currents, water temperature and salinity out to 72 hours.

As its core ocean prediction model, GoMOFS uses the Regional

Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) developed and supported by

researchers at the Rutgers University. ROMS is a free-surface,

terrain-following, primitive equations ocean model widely used

by the scientific and operational community for a diverse range

of applications.

The GoMOFS orthogonal grid has 1132 x 777 horizontal grid points

with roughly 700m as resolution. The vertical grid follows the

terrain and consists of 30 model levels. The grid bathymetry of

the Gulf of Maine ranges from 3m near the coast to 4,500m along

its southern open boundary.

GoMOFS operates within the NOS Coastal Ocean Modeling Framework

(COMF) and has four daily nowcast and forecast cycles at 00, 06,

12 and 18 UTC.

The meteorological forcing used to run GoMOFS is based on the

NWS North American Mesoscale (NAM) weather prediction model

winds for both nowcast and forecast. NCEP's operational

meteorological forecast products of Global Forecast System (GFS)

are used as a backup for NAM.

GoMOFS relies on the Global Real-Time Ocean Forecast System

(G-RTOFS) to provide open boundary temperature, salinity and

sub-tidal water level. ADCIRC 2001 Tidal Database is used to

generate GoMOFS tidal forcing. Additionally, USGS Real-time

river discharge observations at seven major rivers are provided

to drive the model.

GoMOFS has two types of model output data. One type are

field/gridded data which include three dimensional gridded data

with 3 hour interval and two-dimensional gridded surface data

with one hour interval. The other type of data are station/point

output data with 6 minutes interval. Water lever, surface wind,

water temperature, water salinity and currents are the

preliminary output variables.

Fields and station forecast guidance from GoMOFS will be

available in netCDF format on CO-OPS THREDDS server on December

19, 2017.

http://opendap.co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/thredds/catalog.html

and on NCEP NOMADS server

http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/nos/prod/

GoMOFS graphics output is displayed on the CO-OPS web page at

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ofs/gomofs/gomofs.html

Additional information about GoMOFS can be found at

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ofs/gomofs/gomofs_info.html

GoMOFS predictions are used by commercial, recreational

mariners, fisherman, emergency managers, search and rescue

operations, and NWS marine weather forecasters. The development

and implementation of GoMOFS was a joint project of the

NOS/Office of Coast Survey (OCS), the NOS/Center for Operational

Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS), and NWS/NCEP/NCO.

University of Rutgers provided technical support for ROMS.

GoMOFS is monitored 24x7 by both NCO/NCEP and CO-OPS Continuous

Real-Time Monitoring System (CORMS) personnel.

If you have any questions concerning these changes, please

contact:

Dr. Aijun Zhang

NOS/CO-OPS

Silver Spring, MD

Email: Aijun.Zhang@noaa.gov

For questions regarding the dataflow aspects with respect to the

NCEP server at the WOC, please contact:

Rebecca Cosgrove

NCEP/NCO Dataflow Team

College Park, MD

Email: ncep.list.pmb-dataflow@noaa.gov

NWS National Service Change Notices are online at:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/notif.htm

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