Two projects led by CMCC researchers have been selected among the twelve new R&D initiatives funded by the Copernicus Marine Service to drive the evolution of operational oceanography in Europe. These projects exemplify CMCC’s pivotal role in advancing scientific innovation and contribute to addressing critical challenges in ocean and climate modeling.

The Copernicus Marine Service (CMS), a cornerstone of operational oceanography in Europe, has selected twelve new R&D projects to lead the evolution of its activities and prepare for the future. Among these, two projects from CMCC, SICAP and ORACS, have been recognized for their significant contributions to advancing sea ice modeling and ocean reanalysis.

These projects are part of a larger initiative by the Copernicus Marine Service to stay at the forefront of science and technology, ensuring its products meet the evolving needs of users. The selected projects, implemented across Europe, reflect a commitment to tackling critical challenges in ocean forecasting systems, ocean climate, and observational sensitivity studies.

With its extensive experience and expertise in operational modeling, CMCC is poised to make a lasting impact on CMS’s offerings. CMCC has long been a trusted contributor to CMS, providing high-resolution reanalysis products and contributing to global monitoring.

SICAP and ORACS build on this foundation, addressing key scientific and technical challenges to enhance CMS’s capabilities.

Advancing Arctic Sea ice predictions

Sea Ice model Calibration for improved Arctic Predictions (SICAP) is an innovative project that aims to improve the accuracy of Arctic sea ice predictions and regional/global reanalyses. Led by CMCC’s Doroteaciro Iovino, SICAP focuses on developing advanced calibration tools for sea ice models.

By improving the representation of Arctic sea ice, SICAP directly contributes to the CMS objectives, enhancing key products like the CMCC Global Ocean Reanalysis System (C-GLORS) and the NERSC Arctic prediction and analysis system (TOPAZ).

SICAP’s framework promises benefits beyond the CMS portfolio. Its open and adaptable calibration tool can be applied to other sea ice models, fostering a more consistent and accurate representation of Arctic ice evolution across various systems.

“One of the main challenges in sea ice modeling lies in the uncertainties of physical parameters,” says Iovino. “Current models often rely on empirical parameters that are not systematically calibrated, leading to significant inaccuracies. Additionally, observational datasets in polar regions often lack standardization and are not always optimally integrated into models.”

The SICAP project addresses these issues by using advanced algorithms like Green’s Function (GF) and Dual One-Step-Ahead Ensemble Smoother (DOSA-ES) to optimize model parameters and minimize discrepancies between simulations and observations. Furthermore, SICAP provides a generalizable calibration framework designed to be applicable to other models and CMS products, fostering greater consistency across systems and reducing data assimilation errors.

Mastering long-term ocean reanalysis

Led by CMCC’s Andrea Cipollone, Ocean Reanalysis Algorithms for Climate Studies (ORACS) focuses on enhancing the consistency and accuracy of long-term ocean reanalyses. The project tackles one of the most pressing challenges in oceanography: effectively incorporating observational data into models without introducing inconsistencies.

ORACS develops new ensemble error covariance approaches tailored to varying observational networks, such as those from the 1950s and the 1990s, when advancements like solid state technologies and altimeter observations revolutionized ocean monitoring. Additionally, the project employs post-processed smoothing methods to integrate sparse and dense observations, improving data assimilation and bias detection.

By addressing these challenges, ORACS contributes to the development of a more climate-consistent ocean reanalysis framework, offering actionable recommendations to CMS for future reanalysis workflows.

“The ocean has a ‘resilient memory’ that allows it to mitigate abrupt changes, for example, by absorbing heat from the atmosphere and releasing it over varying timescales or under specific conditions,” says Cipollone. “Reconstructing the ocean’s past state is therefore crucial to understanding the present and predicting future scenarios.”

The ORACS project aims to develop algorithms to enhance these reconstructions by estimating the so-called ‘error-of-the-day,’ which quantifies the uncertainty in our knowledge of the ocean’s state at a specific time. This uncertainty is then used to correct the model without introducing inconsistencies or instabilities that could lead to unrealistic simulations.

The ORACS project addresses several critical challenges in ocean reanalysis, including harmonizing corrections derived from sparse historical data to prevent inconsistencies in model outputs. It also focuses on managing the integration of diverse observational inputs, such as atmospheric forcing and riverine contributions, to enhance the accuracy of simulations. By tackling these issues, ORACS supports climate studies with robust and reliable historical reconstructions, providing a strong foundation for understanding past oceanic conditions and their implications for future scenarios.

A vision for the future

Looking ahead, CMCC researchers are committed to broadening the impacts of these projects. For SICAP, this includes extending its methodologies to calibrate ocean variables and be applied to other regions, prioritizing the other polar region. By addressing challenges associated with changing Arctic conditions, the project lays a strong foundation for ongoing and future advancements in sea ice modeling applications. “As Arctic conditions continue to change, it will be crucial to continuously update models to adapt to new physical configurations,” concludes Iovino.

ORACS, on the other hand, will provide recommendations to integrate advanced algorithms into operational services, ensuring that Copernicus Marine Service remains at the cutting edge of oceanographic research. “ORACS’s approaches may be extended to manage additional critical periods, such as the advent of satellite-based sea surface temperature observations in the 1980s or ARGO in situ data in the early 2000s,” says Cipollone. “These advancements will further refine the accuracy and reliability of ocean reanalysis products.”

By addressing critical gaps in sea ice modeling and ocean reanalysis, SICAP and ORACS represent significant progress toward more accurate and reliable tools for understanding and adapting to our changing planet.