Thursday, January 31, 2013

State of the Art Ocean Current Presentation

RTOFS ocean currents predictions are shown here updated daily centered on the near realtime (updated every 2h) location of a vessel underway.  The currents are computed daily at 14z, with initialization time of 00z, with 144 hourly predictions. We show here the data every 6h for 3 days.  

Speed changes at whole knots are marked by a contour line.

The vessel being followed in this example is the rowboat James Robert Hansen (www.oarnorthwest.com) on a 3,600-nmi voyage from Dakar, Senegal to Miami, FL.

There are three vessel positions shown: the latest position, the position 24 hr earlier, and the historic or projected position at the time of the forecast. To see the predicted currents at the present vessel location,  scroll down until the two leading positions overlap.  Also shown are the course made good and speed made good over the past 24 hr.

To view the trends, just click open any one picture, then scroll (mouse roll) though the set to implement an animation of the pattern.

We have an overview of ocean currents at www.starpath.com/currents. These data are from the Hi-res Atlantic RTOFS model.

This presentation and the implementation of it is the fine work of Angeline Pendergrass of the UW Atmospheric Sciences Department. She is the coordinator of the weather forecasting team for this expedition.

00z Today
06z Today
12z Today
18z Today
00z Tomorrow
06z Tomorrow
12z Tomorrow
18z Tomorrow
00z Day after Tomorrow
06z Day after Tomorrow
12z Day after Tomorrow
18z Day after Tomorrow
00z Three days out



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