Atmospheric Forcing as a driver for Ocean Forecasting

Abstract. The connection of the ocean component with the Earth system is subject to the way the atmosphere interacts with it. The paper illustrates the state of the art in the way atmospheric fields are used in ocean models as boundary conditions for the provisioning of the exchanges of heat, freshwater and momentum fluxes. Such fluxes can be based on remote-sensing instruments, like SAR, or provided directly by Numerical Weather Prediction systems. This study also discusses how the ocean-atmosphere fluxes are numerically ingested in ocean models from global to regional to coastal scales. Today’s research frontiers on this topic are opening challenging opportunities for developing more sophisticated coupled ocean-atmosphere systems.