Abstract
The prediction of ocean currents in real time over the warning times of a few hours or days is required in planning many operation-related activities in the ocean. Traditionally this is done through numerical models which are targeted toward producing spatially distributed information. This paper discusses a complementary method to do so when site-specific predictions are desired. It is based on the use of a recurrent type of neural network as well as the statistical tool of model tree. The measurements made at a site in Indian Ocean over a period of 4 years were used. The predictions were made over 72 time steps in advance. The models developed were found to be fairly accurate in terms of the selected error statistics. Among the two modeling techniques the model tree performed better showing the necessity of using distributed models for different sub-domains of data rather than a unique one over the entire input domain. Typically such predictions were associated with average errors of less than 2.0 cm/s. Although the prediction accuracy declined over longer intervals, it was still very satisfactory in terms of theselected error criteria. Similarly prediction of extreme values matched with that of the rest of predictions. Unlike past studies both east-west and north-south current components were predicted fairly well.