Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (NAVMETOCCOM)

System and method for automatically and regularly predicting water level and currents in coastal areas, without operator intervention. The system and method can enable automated operational forecasts at regular time intervals without operator intervention by using a grid and a computer forecast model that allows accurate prediction of tidal heights and currents in complex shoreline and bathymetry regions, single or parallel processing capability, optimal available processor assignment based on the size of computing domain, standard and other tidal database forcing in the open boundary, missing data gap-filling, and wind, bathymetry, and model-derived boundary condition model integration.

Embodiments relate to estimating river discharge and depth. Initially, observed velocities are used to generate a maximum velocity streamline for a river section, which is then used with an observed shoreline to construct a streamline curvilinear grid. The grid is used to interpolate scattered velocity data points, which are used with a bottom friction of the river section to approximate mean total head slope values. A least squares minimization scheme is applied to a velocity-slope relationship to estimate a bottom friction and discharge coefficient by fitting a difference in the predicted mean total head elevation values between upstream and downstream ends of the river section to a respective ζ-average of the measured total head values of the river section. Discharge of the river section is determined based on the coefficient and a velocity-depth relationship and then used to generate a river forecast.

The shipboard wave measurement system (SWMS) makes measurements as a function of time of vehicle position, range from the vehicle to the water's surface, and vehicle heave, pitch and roll to compute the height, direction, period and wavelength of the principal ocean wave component. Since the vehicle is moving, the wave heights measured are at different spatial locations, as well as at different times, and the observed wave height signal is Doppler shifted. The SWMS is composed of a positioning device, a timing device, a wave height estimator (WHE), a Doppler Integrator (DI) and a computer. The positioning device measures the vehicle's position, the timing device provides accurate time referencing for the vehicle position and wave height measurements. The wave height estimator measures range to the water's surface from the vehicle and vehicle vertical acceleration, pitch and roll and generates wave height at specific instants of time. The Doppler integrator receives the time referenced wave height signal from storage and generates the frequency and height of the principal wave component, both as a function of time. Wave direction, period and wavelength are determined from the wave frequency and vehicle position data using a least-squares approach.

System and method for correcting the vertical structure of the ocean temperature and salinity can enable the use of sea surface height (SSH) measurements to correct ocean forecast models. In the present embodiment, three relations that can be precomputed are exploited: (1) the relation between temperature and salinity throughout a water column, (2) the relation between temperature/salinity and geopotential, and (3) the relation between geopotential and SSH. The relations are stored in a form that allows efficient application through a cross-correlation matrix.

System and method for correcting the vertical structure of the ocean temperature and salinity based on velocity observations. Three relations that can be precomputed are exploited: (1) the relation between temperature and salinity throughout a water column, (2) the relation between temperature/salinity and geopotential, and (3) the relation between geopotential and velocity. The relations are stored in a form that allows efficient application through a cross-correlation matrix.

A system and method for estimating ocean surface height and currents at points within a geographic grid. The method includes receiving a user selected location, receiving bathymetric data from a global database, determining whether the user selected location corresponds to a land location or a water covered location by referring to the bathymetric data. If the user selected location is a water-covered location, current and ocean height deviation are estimated for the user selected location. If the user selected location is a land location, current and ocean height deviation for the closest grid point that is water covered are estimated. In exemplary embodiments, the system is rapidly relocatable, has worldwide coverage, and can run on a PC.

A method for predicting water clarity at a plurality of water depths for a location including providing training data to a neural network, the training data representative of water measurements at the location, thereafter receiving inputs including temperature, salinity, tidal information, water depth, and sediment data, and generating values for optical attenuation at a wavelength at a plurality of depths. In one embodiment, a default cloudy day algorithm operates at all times and a clear sky algorithm operates only when clear satellite images are available.