Assessment on the Ocean Mean State and Air/Sea fluxes in UFS Prototype Runs

A community based fully coupled earth predication system UFS (Unified Forecast System) which includes atmosphere (FV3), ocean (MOM6), ice (CICE6) and wave (WW3) models has been developed with joint efforts from EMC, GFDL, ESRL and other organizations. The system has been configured with several different grid resolutions from coarse (C96 atmosphere coupled to 1x1 degree ocean and ice) to fine (C384 atmosphere coupled to 0.25x 0.25 degree ocean and ice) to fit various community requirements. A series of prototype runs at its current highest resolution have been completed to assess UFSs overall performance and identify targets for improvement. Each prototype consists of 168 35-day long runs with initial conditions started from 1st and 15th of each month. In this presentation, a brief introduction on the coupled system will be followed by an overall assessment on the simulation of major ocean features against observations which include sea surface temperatures, salinity, sea surface heights, surface currents and temperature/current vertical structures, along with air/sea momentum and heat fluxes.