An ice-ocean forecasting system for eastern Canadian waters has been developed to provide short-term forecasts of ice concentration, ice thickness, sea surface temperature and other oceanographic variables. The system has been run operationally at Bedford Institute of Oceanography since 2007. Daily forecasts are provided to users in the offshore oil industrial, sea-ice research institutes, and government agencies responsible for search-and-rescue operation and marine shipping. Forecast results in graphic forms are posted on the Internet accessible by the general public. In this paper, the forecast model, forcing data, methods of data assimilation, operational procedure and evaluation of forecast skills are described.
Knowledge of the present and future sea-ice conditions off Canada's east coast is important for the operations of offshore oil industry, marine shipping, fishing and weather forecasting. Timely and reliable ice forecast requires accurate ice models. Ice models have been developed since the mid-1970s (Semtner, 1976). For the east coast of Canada, coupled ice-model models (Tang and Gui, 1996, Yao et al., 2000) were developed and used to study the seasonal variation of ice cover and ice motion. Improvements of the models and the forecasting system led to the development of Canadian East Coast Ocean Model (CECOM) and a new forecasting system at BIO. The new system has been run operationally since 2007. Daily forecasts are provided to users in the offshore oil industrial, sea-ice research institutes, and government agencies responsible for search-and-rescue operation and marine shipping. Forecast results in graphic forms are posted on the Internet accessible by the general public at the following website: http://www.mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/ocean/icemodel/ice_ocean_forecast.html. In this paper, the forecast model and the BIO forecasting system, the methods of data assimilation for sea surface temperature and ice concentration, and the forecast schedule are described.
