Research Summaries

Back Shipboard Forecasting of the Ocean Acoustic Environment

Fiscal Year 2018
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Murphree, James T.
Jordan, Mary S.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary Accurate forecasts of ocean acoustic conditions are critical in planning and conducting undersea warfare operations. These forecasts describe the evolution over time of spatially and temporally complex features of the acoustic environment. This complexity means that the transmission of forecasts to at-sea users requires high bandwidth that is often not available, especially for submarines. So at-sea units may have limited or no access to forecasts, especially high resolution forecasts. Thus, there is a need for shipboard forecasting capabilities to provide forecasts when communications are limited, such as in anti-access, area denial (A2AD) conditions. We will address this need by developing and testing methods for the shipboard production of high resolution forecasts.
These methods will be based on several findings from ocean climate research. First, multi-decadal ocean data sets can be analyzed to identify characteristic ocean variations, especially intraseasonal and longer changes (such as those associated with cold surges, variations in tropical cyclone and monsoon activity, the Madden-Julian Oscillation, and El Nino-La Nina events). Second, predictors of characteristic conditions can be identified by statistical and dynamical analyses of multi-decadal atmospheric and oceanic data sets. Third, the predictors can be used to develop skillful forecasts of ocean conditions at lead times of days to months. Fourth, versions of these forecast systems that can be potentially run at sea --- and that require only limited information from onshore centers --- can be skillful, especially at leads of a week or longer. We will apply these findings to develop tools for creating ocean acoustic forecasts on submarines. We will focus on developing methods for providing users of antisubmarine warfare (ASW) tactical decision aids (TDAs) with access to high resolution three-dimensional sound speed field forecasts under very low bandwidth or no communication conditions.
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Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal