Setting up a water quality ensemble forecast for coastal ecosystems: a case study of the southern North Sea

Abstract

Prediction systems, such as the coastal ecosystem models, often incorporate complex non-linear ecological processes. There is an increasing interest in the use of probabilistic forecasts instead of deterministic forecasts in cases where the inherent uncertainties in the prediction system are important. The primary goal of this study is to set up an operational ensemble forecasting system for the prediction of the Chlorophyll-a concentration in coastal waters, using the Generic Ecological Model. The input ensemble is generated from perturbed model process parameters and external forcings through Latin Hypercube Sampling with Dependence. The forecast performance of the ensemble prediction is assessed using several forecast verification metrics that can describe the forecast accuracy, reliability and discrimination. The verification is performed against in-situ measurements and remote sensing data. The ensemble forecast moderately outperforms the deterministic prediction at the coastal in-situ measurement stations. The proposed ensemble forecasting system is therefore a promising tool to provide enhanced water quality prediction for coastal ecosystems which, with further inclusion of other uncertainty sources, could be used for operational forecasting.

Operational Modeling Capacity in European Seas—An EuroGOOS Perspective and Recommendations for Improvement

“…The survey thus highlights that the main restraining factors in providing an accurate description of the marine environment are considered to be external (data and forcings), rather than internal (processes and parameters). An obvious example is given by models of coastal biogeochemistry, which are largely driven by land inputs of nutrients and organic materials (e.g., Mészáros and El Serafy, 2018). Assessing those inputs requires hydrological approaches, land-use, and eventually, socio-economical models, but to express quantitatively those forcing in a way that is relevant for marine and coastal systems, the transformation occurring in a narrow transition zone between the land and marine domains needs a dedicated attention.…”

3D Ensemble Simulation of Seawater Temperature – An Application for Aquaculture Operations

“…Several verification measures are available to assess various statistical attributes associated with both deterministic and probabilistic simulations. In this paper, we used the measures proposed by Mészáros and El Serafy (2018), listed in Table 2. When the deterministic verification measures are to be used to assess ensemble simulations, one single plausible trace needs to be chosen from ensembles.…”

A hybrid wavelet-Lyapunov exponent model for river water quality forecast

“…With growing infrastructure and analysis methods for environmental monitoring and data accumulation around the world in recent years, the arrival of the era of data-intensive innovation provides new opportunities for the development and use of more sophisticated data-driven models. In this regard, the rapid development of many machine learning techniques certainly provides new avenues for modeling and prediction of water quality dynamics (Meszaros & El Serafy 2018;Yajima & Derot 2018).…”