UFS Coastal Applications Team Report: Round 2 summary of a Unified Forecast System Model Evaluation for Marine Navigation Unified Forecast System Coastal Applications Team Report: Round 2 summary of a Unified Forecast System Model Evaluation for Marine Navigation

This report documents the second round of the model evaluation effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Unified Forecast System (UFS) Coastal Application Team (CAT) Marine Navigation Sub-Application. The effort follows the 1) the first phase of the project, which included gathering user requirements, generating an initial list of oceanographic models to evaluate, and defining skill assessment guidelines for the future model evaluation (Seroka et al. 2022), and 2) the first round of the second phase of the project– the model evaluation (Seroka et al. 2024). The project has worked toward the major goals of UFS CAT, which are 1) to evaluate potential coastal ocean models for the coastal ocean model components of the UFS and 2) to train the next generation of coastal modelers to accelerate the Research-to-Operations (R2O) process within the National Ocean Service (NOS).