A Regional Ocean Reanalysis System for Coastal Waters of China and Adjacent Seas

A regional ocean reanalysis system for the coastal waters of China and adjacent seas has been developed by the National Marine Data and Information Service (NMDIS). It produces a dataset package called CORA (China ocean reanalysis). The regional ocean model used is based on the Princeton Ocean Model with a generalized coordinate system (POMgcs). The model is parallelized by NMDIS with the addition of the wave breaking and tidal mixing processes into model parameterizations. Data assimilation is a sequential three-dimensional variational (3D-Var) scheme implemented within a multigrid framework. Observations include satellite remote sensing sea surface temperature (SST), altimetry sea level anomaly (SLA), and temperature/salinity profiles. The reanalysis fields of sea surface height, temperature, salinity, and currents begin with January 1986 and are currently updated every year. Error statistics and error distributions of temperature, salinity and currents are presented as a primary evaluation of the reanalysis fields using sea level data from tidal gauges, temperature profiles, as well as the trajectories of Argo floats. Some case studies offer the opportunity to verify the evolution of certain local circulations. These evaluations show that the reanalysis data produced provide a good representation of the ocean processes and phenomena in the coastal waters of China and adjacent seas.