20 Years of Operational Forecasting at Oceanweather

The rapid evolution of numerical wave prediction models over the past three decades has been closely linked with the desire to improve operational wave forecasting systems. For example, the P-T-B directional spectral wave model (Pierson et al., 1966), supported initially to develop new wave climate data for improved ship design, was implemented at the Fleet Numerical Oceanography (FNOC, now FNMOC) as arguably the first true spectral model to be used for wave forecasting in 1973 (Lazanoff and Stevenson 1975), well before the same model was applied to develop a Northern Hemisphere wave climate. By the time of the SWAMP wave model inter-comparison exercise (SWAMP, 1985) most of the models that participated were being used to make real time wave forecasts (e.g. MRI (Japan), NOWAMO (Norway), GONO (The Netherlands), BMO (UK), HYPA (Germany)). It is not widely appreciated that the main objective of the WAM Group during the 1980’s was to develop a model to be implemented into the real time system of the ECMWF in time to be ready to assimilate satellite wave data from the ERS satellite scheduled for launch in the early 1990s. Subsequent to that landmark implementation (The WAM Group, 1988), WAM and later third generational wave models such as WAVEWATCH-3 (Tolman 1991) were quickly adopted by most major government numerical weather prediction centers (NWP) to make global wave forecasts.