What is OrangeCrush SeaState and how is it generated?.

 OrangeCrush SeaState is a weather forecast and climatology system that was designed and built by Dr. Les Bender, and tailored specifically for Dr. Dan Orange. As anyone who has worked with Dan knows, he relies on his pdf decks of plots to make the best informed decision. So in honor of Dan, his pdf decks, and a tip of the hat to the Orange Crush Defense of the 1977 Super Bowl Denver Broncos, this site was named OrangeCrush. And every SeaState site since then has had a product that puts all the plots into one pdf deck, Orange Crush, found at the bottom of the Product navigation bar, found on the left of every web page.

Dr. Bender has 25 years of experience in operational meteorology and oceanography. He saw the need for a straight-forward weather product that focused on providing real-time sea state information specifically tailored to operations at sea conducted by small companies. The web site is not visually impressive, and it was not meant to be. It was designed to convey offshore weather information needed to make daily and long-term operational decisions in a compact format that requires a very limited satellite bandwidth, i.e., there are no ads or click-through’s.

The information presented in OrangeCrush SeaState is not provided by a professional third party source, but is downloaded directly from the data made available by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). This is the same source as used by popular weather apps such as Weather Underground, AccuWeather, WeatherBug, the Weather Channel, Windy, etc. The foundational tenet of the DeepBlueAnalysis SeaState series is the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center, NOAA, and NCEP will always do a better job because they have the people, the weather stations, the weather buoys, the budget, and the advanced numerical models and computing resources that private industry would be challenged to duplicate.

There are three major components to OrangeCrush SeaState:

• Waves and Winds
• Ocean
• Atmosphere

Waves and Winds: The operational wave and wind forecasts that make up OrangeCrush SeaState use the NCEP/EMC global deterministic wave model unified with the Global Forecast System (GFS). The WAVEWATCH III spectral wave model is one way coupled to the atmospheric forecast model. In addition, ocean currents from the Global Real-Time Ocean Forecast System (RTOFS) are input to the wave model. The model is run by NCEP four times a day: 00Z, 06Z, 12Z, and 18Z and produces hourly forecasts out to 120 hours and every 3 hours from 120 to 384 hrs (5-16 days). There are three native computational grids, one for the arctic, one for one for the northern hemisphere (15S to 52.5N), and one for the southern hemisphere (10.5S to 79.5S) and four post-processed grids.

There is an option to enhance the wave forecasts with an embeded, localized SWAN wave model to handle shallow-water bathymetry and small island shadowing effects that are not resolved with the higher resolution WaveWatch III model. This option must be requested.

Ocean: The operational ocean current, temperature and salinity forecasts that make up OrangeCrush SeaState use (RTOFS). RTOFS is based on an eddy resolving 1/12 degree global HYCOM (Hybrid Coordinates Ocean Model) that serves as the backbone of the National Weather Service's operational ocean system. The model runs once a day and produces a nowcast and eight days of forecasts. There is a single computational grid for the globe.

Atmosphere: The operational atmospheric forecasts that make up OrangeCrush SeaState use the Global Forecast System (GFS). The entire globe is covered by the GFS at a base horizontal resolution of 28 km. The model is run by NCEP four times a day: 00Z, 06Z, 12Z, and 18Z.  Each run produces forecasts of every 3 hours from the initial time out to 16 days. 

In addition to the three major components there are a number of additional components in OrangeCrush SeaState:

• Sea Level
• Sound Speed
• Absorption Coefficients
• Weather Resources
• Bathymetry

Sea Level: The sea level tidal height variations and transports are generated with the OSU TXPO Tide Models. TXPO is a series of fully global models of ocean tides, which best fits, in a least squares sense, the Laplace Tidal Equations and satellite altimetry data.

Sound Speed: The sound speed profile is generated from the Chen & Milero model (1977) using the salinity and temperature profiles extracted from RTOFS. The temperature from the RTOFs model is potential temperature relative to the surface. Therefore in order to compare to actual sound speed profiles calculated from CTD profiles, which obviously are not using potential temperature, the model potential temperature is first converted to the insitu temperature. Pressures are converted to depth in metres using Leroy & Parthiot (1998). If needed, sound speed profiles can also be generated using the models of Del Grosso (1974) as modified by Wong & Zhu (1995), Fofonoff & Millard (1983), Mackenzie (1981), Wilson (1960) and the Thermodynamic Equation of SeaWater 2010 (TEOS10).

Absorption Coefficient: The absorption coefficient profile is calculated from the Absorption Coefficient Model (Kongsberg, 2007) using the salinity profile and the insitu temperature profile used for the sound speed, the sound speed profile itself (see above) and a default value of the ocean pH as 8.00. There is ongoing work to utilize the Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Analysis and Forecast model run each day by the Copernicus Marine Service to obtain a pH profile. The value of the absorption coefficient as a function of depth for a range of frequencies can be found in the downloadable csv file by clicking on the "Data" tab under Sound Speed & Absorption Coefficient.

Weather Resources: A link to additional weather resources such as visible satellite images, radar images, frontal analysis, and nearby NDB wave buoys.

Bathymetry: Finally, there is an option to show the bathymetry from available DEM models (if any), ETOPO1, GEBCO30, GEBCO 2019, SRTM15, and GMRT, as well as the (coarse) bathymetry of the RTOFS model. This option must be requested.

References:

Chen C.T., Millero F.J. (1977). Speed of sound in seawater at high pressures. J. Acoust. Soc. Am, 62(5), 1129-1135.
Del Grosso, V.A. (1974). New equation for the speed of sound in natural waters. J. Acoust. Soc. Am, 56(4), 1084 - 1091.
Fofonoff, P. and Millard, R.C. Jr. (1983). Algorithms for computation of fundamental properties of seawater, Unesco Tech. Pap. in Mar. Sci., No. 44, 53 pp.
Kongsberg, (2007). SIS Operator Manual, Rev. F, Technical Reference, Section 7.16
K.V. Mackenzie, K.V. (1981). Nine-term equation for the sound speed in the oceans. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 70(3), pp 807-812.
Leroy, C.C. & F Parthiot (1998). Depth-pressure relationship in the oceans and seas. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 103(3) pp 1346-1352.
Wilson W. D. (1960). Equation for the speed of sound in sea water. J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., 32(10), p. 1357.