Predicting the submesoscale circulation inshore of the East Australian Current

Submesoscale flows dominate the vertical transport in the upper ocean and play an important role in air-sea fluxes, the distribution of nutrients and biota, the connectivity of populations. Yet submesoscale predictability is a new frontier and presents additional challenges to that of mesoscale flows. This study assesses the capacity of an operational system to predict the circulation along the landward edge of the East Australian Current where the cyclonic band of vorticity allows small scale instabilities to grow. We use a downscaling approach in which a fine-scale resolution (750–1000 m) coastal model is one-way nested within a coarser resolution (2.5–6 km) mesoscale eddy-resolving regional model that assimilates all available data, including coastal high-frequency radar radial velocities. Assimilation of the surface radial velocities into the regional model provides improved representation of the cyclonic band inshore of the current, however forecasts at this resolution perform poorly in representing this cyclonic vorticity. Downscaling to the higher resolution coastal model produces a sharper across-current vorticity gradient within the EAC and leads in turn to more intense submesoscale features growing on its inshore side. Boundary forcing error from the regional model propagates into the nested coastal model. The results motivate improved representation of fine-scale flows in regional forecasts for downscaling purposes.