Ocean Circulation Modeling for Operational Oceanography: Current Status and Future Challenges

This chapter focuses on ocean circulation models used in operational oceanography, physical oceanography and climate science. Ocean circulation models are a particular branch of ocean numerical modeling that focuses on the representation of ocean physical properties over spatial scales ranging from the global scale to less than a kilometer and time scales ranging from hours to decades. As such, they are an essential building block for operational oceanography systems and their design receives a lot of attention from operational and research centers.