An Overview of the Marine Components in NOAA’s Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) and Seasonal Forecasting System (SFS)

The next operational version of the NOAA’s Global Ensemble Forecasting System (GEFS) and Seasonal Forecast System (SFS) will include sea ice, ocean, and wave predictions. The model is based on NOAA’s fully-coupled Earth system modeling framework, the Unified Forecast System (UFS), which couples multiple models/components for an accurate representation and predictions of the earth system for days to seasons. This presentation will describe the coupling with the marine components, initialization, and present preliminary results and compare these results to appropriate EMC models. The sea ice model is version 6 of the Community ICE Model (CICE) sea ice model, the ocean model is Modular Ocean Model version 6 (MOM6), and the wave model is WAVEWATCHIII. After the marine systems are described and current results are examined, future steps and challenges will be explored.