A new global daily sea‐surface temperature analysis system at Environment and Climate Change Canada

Abstract

A new global daily sea‐surface temperature (SST) analysis system has been developed at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). All components of the new SST analysis system are implemented within the Modular and Integrated Data Assimilation System (MIDAS) software. MIDAS is already used for the data assimilation component of the main operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems at ECCC. The new SST analysis system, integrated together with the global sea‐ice analysis, will be part of the combined ocean surface analysis used for all operational prediction systems at ECCC. The data assimilation method used to compute the new SST analyses is two‐dimensional variational method with a diffusion operator for representing the horizontal background‐error correlations. A new algorithm for satellite data bias estimation has also been developed employing gridded bias estimates computed from a spatial averaging of the differences between collocated satellite and in‐situ data. New algorithms for quality control and thinning of satellite data have also been implemented, making each type of observational dataset more evenly distributed over the globe. The performance of the new SST system is examined relative to the current operational SST system by using independent data. The impact of using the new SST analysis within NWP and ocean prediction systems is also evaluated. When compared with the operational system currently in use, the experiments employing the new SST analysis system produce a nearly neutral impact on the NWP and ocean prediction systems. This validation of the new system is an important first step towards the ability to use MIDAS to perform ensemble‐based three‐dimensional ocean and coupled ocean‐ice–atmosphere data assimilation.