David Ford
David works on modelling the biogeochemistry of the open ocean, and the assimilation of biological and physical data.
Areas of expertise
- Marine biogeochemical modelling
- Marine data assimilation
Current activities
David is working on developing the Met Office's short-range forecasting capabilities for biological and geochemical parameters of the open ocean. He uses the HadOCC biogeochemical model, which has been coupled to the NEMO hydrodynamic model. This is running pre-operationally in near-real time, as well as being run on a hindcast basis.
A particular focus currently is assessing the performance of the biological data assimilation scheme jointly developed by National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and Ocean Forecasting Research and Development This assimilates chlorophyll observations derived from satellite measurements of ocean colour. Based on the chlorophyll increments, the other biological and geochemical variables are updated accordingly.
David is also calculating new estimates for the error covariance matrices for the physical data assimilation scheme used within NEMO.
Career background
David joined the Met Office in 2008 as part of the Marine Data Assimilation team, before moving to the Applied Ocean Modelling Research team in 2009. Before this he completed a BSc in Mathematics and Physics at Cardiff University.