AXIOM-1 Ocean chlorophyll, Sea Ice Thickness and Atmospheric Precipitable Water

As a preamble to a fully coupled integrated earth system analysis, the atmospheric model is constrained to the GMAO MERRA-2 atmospheric reanalysis (prior to June 2013) and to the GMAO operational forward processing stream (after June 2013) while the SST, SSS, ice concentration and chlorophyll data are assimilated into the coupled model using a new methodology [State Adaptive Forecast-error Estimation (SAFE): https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/pubs/docs/Keppenne721.pdf] developed especially for high-resolution data assimilation.

This animation shows the ocean surface chlorophyll concentration and sea ice thickness fields (shown over grid cells where the fractional ice coverage is greater than 15%) and the vertical integral of atmospheric precipitable water (transparent overlay) sampled every 6 hours from January 1, 2013 to November 1, 2014 from a reanalysis completed with the AXIOM-1 system. The chlorophyll concentration is proportional to the ocean biomass and primary production and influences how deep solar radiation can heat the ocean sub-surface which needs to be accounted for in numerical ocean models.