AXIOM-1 Sea Surface Temperature

AXIOM-1 (eXperimental Analysis of sea Ice and Ocean Mesoscale version 1) is a coupled analysis of the global ocean and sea ice obtained by assimilating Aquarius sea surface salinity (SSS) and MODIS chlorophyll data together with sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice concentrations (SIC) from the OSTIA objective analysis into a high-resolution version of the MOM-5 ocean general circulation model (OGCM) coupled to the CICE sea ice model (IGCM) and to the GEOS-5 atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM). The OGCM and IGCM horizontal resolutions vary from 11km to less than 3km in the Arctic. The AGCM resolution is the same as that used to produce the GMAO operational weather forecasts (25km).

As a preamble to a fully coupled integrated earth system analysis, the AGCM 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, SIC and chlorophyll observations are assimilated into the coupled model using a new methodology (SAFE: Spatially Adaptive Forecast-error Estimation) developed especially for high-resolution data assimilation.

This animation shows the OGCM SST and IGCM ice thickness fields (The latter is shown over grid cells where the fractional ice coverage is greater than 15%) and the vertical integral of AGCM precipitable water (transparent overlay). These fields are sampled every 6 hours from June 1, 2012 to October 22, 2014 from a reanalysis completed with the AXIOM-1 system. Most tropical cyclones are identifiable by the SST cooling they induce.