Integrated System for Wind Wave Forecasting in the World Ocean and Russian Seas

The paper describes a system for wind wave forecasting in the World Ocean, which has resulted from the development of the operational forecast technology functioning at the Hydrometcenter of Russia since 2014. The system is built on the linked “ocean–sea–coastal zone” scheme designed for making forecasts over the entire World Ocean and individual Russian seas. The developed model configurations make it possible to compute wave parameters with a horizontal resolution of 10–20 km in oceans and 1–5 km in Russian seas. To detail the forecasts in the coastal zone of the seas, unstructured triangulation grids with a horizontal resolution of 100–1000 m are used in relatively small water areas. The boundary conditions at the open boundaries of the coastal computational domain, which are necessary for calculations, are generated in the model of a corresponding sea. The verification results of the forecasts of the significant wave height over the World Ocean based on satellite altimetry observations show the values of traditional forecast skill scores comparable to those of leading forecast centers.