Regional Hydrodynamic Model Outputs of the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Operational Forecast System (CBOFS)

Oceanographic nowcasts and forecast guidance are scientific predictions about the present and future states of a water body (generally including water levels, currents, water temperature and salinity). These predictions rely on either observed data or forecasts from large-scale numerical models. A nowcast incorporates recent (and often near real-time) observed meteorological, oceanographic, and/or river flow rate data and/or analyzed (e.g. gridded) meteorological and oceanographic products. The wind data used to run CBOFS are based on the National Weather Service (NWS)/Real Time Mesoscale Analysis (RTMA) winds (for the nowcast) and an interpolation of the NWS North American Mesoscale (NAM)-12 atmospheric forecast model data (for the forecast). The NWS Global Forecasting System winds serve as backup winds for both the nowcast and forecast runs.

CBOFS runs on NOAA's High Performance Computers (HPC) in a new Coastal Ocean Modeling Framework (COMF) developed by CO-OPS. All CO-OPS official real-time products, including nowcast and forecast guidance from CBOFS are monitored by the CO-OPS's Continuous Operational Real-Time Monitoring System (CORMS). CORMS provides 24 hour per day, 7 days per week monitoring and quality control of sensors and data in order to ensure the availability, accuracy, and quality of tide, water level, current, and other marine environmental information. CORMS is intended to identify invalid and erroneous data and information before application of the data by real-time and near real-time users.