Real-time oceanic forecasts were constructed at sea on Georges Bank during Spring 1999. Ship- and shore-based computations were combined to deliver daily 3-day forecasts to shipboard scientists for interpreting observations and planning operations. Data assimilated included acoustic Doppler current profiler velocities, drifter trajectories, and taxa-specific plankton observations from a Video Plankton Recorder (VPR) system. Services provided included basic 3-D circulation forecasts, forecast positions of drifters, dye and zoo-plankton, and the advective adjustment of observations to produce synoptic maps. The results indicate that real-time, at-sea data assimilative modeling can provide valuable information services and can be deployed routinely, provided that networking among ships, instruments, and shore continues to improve. This paper summarizes the real-time modeling experience. Results of the larger effort including scientific data interpretation are being reported separately
