Pre-operational modeling of ocean circulation
for the North East Asia regional seas
Moon-Sik Suk
Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute
Ansan POB 29, Seoul 425-600, Korea
Abstract:
An operational prediction model suitably applicable to the oceanographic condition around
Korea is being developed as a synthetic system for supplying the prediction information through the
national network to users who need urgently it at operational environment such as fishing, searching and
rescuing, defending oil spill and red tide etc. The system is the first step in providing real-time prediction
information of 3-D temperature, salinity, current fields and sea surface height around Korean Seas from
KEY model (Suk et al, 1996). The research efforts are directed towards producing the better
understanding of the circulation dynamics and the predictability of the prognostic variables in KEY
model. The efficient three-dimensional, time-dependent prediction model has been developed and applied
to Korean Seas. We present our recent progress in establishing an operational ocean prediction system for
waters around Korea. One of the factors that determine the accuracy of an ocean prediction model is the
quality of input data for open boundaries and sea surface forcing from observations. Most of the observed
data are temperature and salinity, however, the current data for input boundary are very few. It is also
affected by the data assimilation method, sub-grid scale parameterization, and numerical schemes adopted
in the model. Argo float is valuable both in data assimilation and in verification of operational prediction.