Implementing the EnKF into NorESM

The 5th assessment of the IPCC, scheduled for 2014, will partly be dedicated to evaluating the feasibility of decadal-scale climate predictions. Skillful predictions on inter-annual to decadal timescales will fill the present scientific and mitigation gaps between the established fields of seasonal forecasting and future climate change projection. We intend to study the capability of the Ensemble Kalman Filter to assimilate satellite data (at first sea surface temperature) within the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM).
The Ensemble Kalman Filter is a state of the art multivariate data assimilation method able to handle non-linear forecasting application and provide the uncertainty of the prediction. First, a reduced and uncoupled version of NorESM is used to identify the most responsive parameters of the ocean model, and analyze for how long the benefit of the assimilation remain once observations are no longer assimilated. This manuscript details the technical implementation of the method and practical information for further use or development.