MERSEA TOP2 Assessment report. Arctic Thematic Portal

The goal of this document is to present results from scientific validation (i.e., physical oceanography considerations) of five systems operated routinely. The validation methodology follows three main steps:
1. Consistency: verifying that the system outputs are consistent with the current knowledge of the ocean circulation and climatologies.
2. Quality (or accuracy of the hindcast/nowcast): quantifying the differences between the systems “best results” (analysis) and the sea truth, as estimated from observations, preferably using independent observations (not assimilated).
3. Performance (or accuracy of the forecast): quantifying the short term forecast capacity of each system, i.e. answering the questions: do we perform better than persistency? Better than climatology?