Applications of the Gulf of Maine Operational Forecast System to Enhance Spatio-Temporal Oceanographic Awareness for Ocean Mapping

Abstract

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Despite recent technological advances in seafloor mapping systems, the resulting products and the overall operational efficiency of surveys are often affected by poor awareness of the oceanographic environment in which the surveys are conducted. Increasingly reliable ocean nowcast and forecast model predictions of key environmental variables – from local to global scales – are publicly available, but they are often not used by ocean mappers. With the intention of rectifying this situation, this work evaluates some possible ocean mapping applications for commonly available oceanographic predictions by focusing on one of the available regional models: NOAA’s Gulf of Maine Operational Forecast System. The study explores two main use cases: the use of predicted oceanographic variability in the water column to enhance and extend (or even substitute) the data collected on-site by sound speed profilers during survey data acquisition; and, the uncertainty estimation of oceanographic variability as a meaningful input to estimate the optimal time between sound speed casts. After having described the techniques adopted for each use case and their implementation as an extension of publicly available ocean mapping tools, this work provides evidence that the adoption of these techniques has the potential to improve efficiency in survey operations as well as the quality of the resulting ocean mapping products.

Keywords

• ocean mapping
• underwater acoustics applications
• oceanographic modeling
• operational forecast models
• surveying accuracy