Gregory Smith (Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada)

Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) sea surface height anomaly (SSHA) data were used for ocean monitoring and prediction off Canada’s west and east coasts. For the ocean monitoring, a method was developed to reconstruct weekly, monthly and seasonal SSHA fields on a regular spatial grid. Surface geostrophic current anomalies were derived from the reconstructed SSHA fields. Experiments were carried out to refine the reconstruction method and to assess temporal and spatial scales in which SSHA and current features can be reconstructed properly. The mean surface circulation field from a coastal ocean model was added to the SWOT surface current anomalies to produce the absolute currents. For the ocean prediction, after successful Observing System Simulation experiments, real SWOT data were assimilated in the Regional Ice Ocean Prediction System demonstrating significant improvements in SSHA statistics. Further efforts to investigate how to constrain small-scale features from SWOT are being pursued in a 1/36th degree resolution configuration for the Northwest Atlantic Ocean.