Caro-COOPS Goal and Objectives

The central goal of Caro-COOPS is prediction of coastal ocean processes. The overall objectives are to:

• integrate information on the causal biological, chemical, and physical processes in the Carolinas' coastal ocean to provide a thorough understanding of how physical forcing and biological responses are coupled on regional spatial scales and seasonal, inter-annual, and decadal time scales;
• assess the predictability of specific coastal processes and events;
• develop accurate forecasting models;
• create tools for applying and evaluating these predictions in the context of "end-to-end" early-warning systems; and
• detect and understand the regional signals of climate variability and change.

Caro-COOPS will represent a wholly integrated system for coastal observations and their application to user-driven research, societal, and economic needs. Moreover, it will provide three major advances in observing system capacities and capabilities:

1. It will establish an extensive array of instrumented moorings in the South Atlantic Bight, which currently receives extremely sparse coverage compared with other significant coastal regions, such as the Gulf of Mexico, New England coast, and the Chesapeake Bay.
2. It includes the development of a comprehensive data management system, essential for access to, and integration of, high quality, real-time data. The system will be designed to maximize flexibility and utility, with a view towards supporting or integrating with other coastal ocean observing systems;
3. It incorporates an advanced suite of integrated models that will markedly improve the predictive capacities of real-time physical data from coastal ocean instrumentation.

An initial demonstration of the real-time interdisciplinary forecast concept for Caro-COOPS is focusing on real-time prediction and analyses of storm surge and flooding before and during landfall of coastal storms. This will be accomplished to improve warnings and provide local officials with the information needed to focus on mitigation, preparedness, and prevention measures. Most recently, Caro-COOPS has also been laying the groundwork to develop a pilot project to incorporate predictions of climate variability and other meteorological and oceanic forcings into short-term forecasts of fisheries recruitment.