Dr. Pubali Mukherjee, a postdoc at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) in Miami, FL, spent last week in Boulder working with JCSDA’s Dr. Travis Sluka on JEDI (Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration) ocean data assimilation. Dr. Mukherjee joined AOML in May to work on integrating JEDI SOCA (Sea-ice, Ocean, Coupled Assimilation) for NOAA Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS).
Dr. Mukherjee spent her week at JCSDA getting hands-on training with SOCA and gaining a better understanding of the software, as well as how to adapt the generic parts of SOCA and the model interface between JEDI and NOAA models. One big step forward for that this year has been the generic horizontal resolution change and the explicit diffusion operator for static B-matrix implemented by the JEDI team last quarter. AOML works with 1/12 degree resolution MOM6 over the Atlantic, which can be computationally expensive for data assimilation. With this resolution change implementation NOAA can begin running higher resolution variational data assimilation at lower cost. These experiments will provide helpful guidance for the HAFS development team at NOAA Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) and collaborators as they make decisions on implementing an Ensemble Variational (EnVar) hybrid system for ocean DA. We look forward to seeing further advancements from this collaboration!
Dr. Mukherjee also works with the University of Miami Cooperative Institute for Marine & Atmospheric Studies.