INCOIS working towards improving accuracy of short-term variation of coastal currents

INCOIS research aims to enhance coastal current predictions for fisheries, shipping, and tourism sectors in India.

Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) has taken up a priority research to improve accuracy of short term variation of coastal currents, their driving mechanism and the inability of the current numeral models to predict them.

Most users of operational services of INCOIS for fisheries, shipping and oil exploration industries among others operate in shallow areas (less than 100 m) in the coastal waters. An important requirement for them is to have an accurate, timely and highly localised prediction of coastal currents, waves and tides at timescales of 5–7 days.

The current accuracy of operational ocean predictions in such a short time and space is not enough to meet the requirements of the users. This is due to a lack of understanding of the processes involved in short-term variation of coastal currents. Hence, there is a need to gain deep insights into them to improve predictions, according to scientists T. Srinivasa Kumar and P.A. Francis.

With marine tourism, energy and and non-living resource sectors expanding rapidly along with transport and fisheries, it is imperative to come out with advanced models for predicting the happenings in the ocean with climate change being another major factor, they said.

There are plans to establish wind and solar power plants as renewable energy sources using waves, currents and tides in the coastal waters to harness uninterrupted energy. Such activities demand more accurate predictions and projections of ocean conditions such as beach water quality in different time and space scales.

The growing tourism sector, too, will need predictions of water quality on beaches, rip currents, surf zones and others to ensure suitability for recreation. Specific forecasts and advisories on habitat suitability for marine capture fisheries will be a requirement in the future. Long-term projections on rising sea-level and identification of coastal regions that can get inundated due to sea-level rise are also important for making policies on coastal zone management and planning the coastal infrastructure.

INCOIS scientists intend to expand operational oceanographic services by taking these factors into account. Development of a unified ocean modelling system, projections of changes in sea level and extreme waves and storm surges, establishment of an optimal ocean observation network and water quality monitoring systems and developing impact-based ocean forecast and advisory services are some of the initiatives towards achieving these goals, they added.