Coastal Ocean Forecasting: science foundation and user benefits

To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work. This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the author(s) and published by Taylor & Francis. The published article can be found at: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjoo20#.Vs8gtUZyyqkThe advancement of Coastal Ocean Forecasting Systems (COFS) requires the support of continuous scientific progress addressing: (a) the primary mechanisms driving coastal circulation; (b) methods to achieve fully integrated coastal systems (observations and models), that are dynamically embedded in larger scale systems; and (c) methods to adequately represent air-sea and biophysical interactions. Issues of downscaling, data assimilation, atmosphere-wave-ocean couplings and ecosystem dynamics in the coastal ocean are discussed. These science topics are fundamental for successful COFS, which are connected to evolving downstream applications, dictated by the socioeconomic needs of rapidly increasing coastal populations