The purpose of the Regional Ocean Forecast System (ROFS) is to generate
daily nowcasts (i.e. analysis) and short-term (on order of days)
forecasts of ocean properties for the coastal ocean of the United
States. The development of ROFS for the U.S. East coast began in 1991
and was implemented as an experimental real time forecasting system in
August, 1993. ROFS is based on a hydrodynamic, three-dimensional ocean
circulation model driven driven at the ocean surface boundary by heat,
moisture, and momentum fluxes provided by NCEP's Eta mesoscale
atmospheric forecast model. [This purpose statement was obtained from
the ROFS website at http://polar.wwb.noaa.gov/cofs/ on June 23, 2004.]