Experimental wave forecast to support 2024 R/V Mirai Arctic Ocean expedition

This is an experimental TodaiWW3-ArCS wave forecast dataset to support the annual R/V Mirai Arctic Ocean expedition. From the 2023 expedition, an ensemble approach was adopted to improve the usability of the wave forecast by considering the uncertainty of the wave forecast. The ensemble members were produced by simply changing the ice forcing products while the surface forcing is still the ECMWF forecast 10m wind field. The five sea ice forcing members are RIOPS (ECCC Canada), neXtSIM-f (NERSC Norway), TOPAZ4 (NERSC & Met. Norway), IcePOM (ASIIC Japan), and AMSR2 (kept constant for the forecast period).
The model is experimental and has not been tuned. The forecast was originally delivered to help our wave buoy deployment planning. From around 2022, the forecast has also been used to support the onboard observation scheduling and to ensure safe working conditions for crew members, e.g., deciding ideal sea conditions to conduct major deck operations.

The R/V Mirai forecast domain has an 8 km resolution and covers the expedition's scheduled track. This domain is nested within the pan-Arctic Ocean domain with 16 km resolution.

The simulation is automated on the Google Cloud Computing platform, which was configured by T. Terui of ADS NIPR.