Simultaneous versus sequential estimation of biogeochemical and physical parameters in coupled marine ecosystem models

Kern, Skyler; McGuinn, Mary E.; Smith, Katherine M.; Pinardi, Nadia; Niemeyer, Kyle E.; Lovenduski, Nicole S.; Hamlington, Peter E.

doi:10.5194/gmd-19-5601-2026

Articles | Volume 19, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-5601-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-5601-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 12

Development and technical paper

|

29 Jun 2026

Development and technical paper |

| 29 Jun 2026

Simultaneous versus sequential estimation of biogeochemical and physical parameters in coupled marine ecosystem models

Skyler Kern, Mary E. McGuinn, Katherine M. Smith, Nadia Pinardi, Kyle E. Niemeyer, Nicole S. Lovenduski, and Peter E. Hamlington

Data sets

BFM17+POM1D Optimization Data and Plotting Scripts S. Kern et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20277224

Model code and software

skylerjk/BFM17_POM1D: 17 State Variable Biogeochemical Flux Model with the 1D Princeton Ocean Model S. Kern et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16702246

skylerjk/BFM17-Opt: Coupling BFM17+POM1D to DAKOTA for Simultaneous Optimization S. Kern et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16700702

Short summary

The parameters that control a model's behavior determine its ability to represent a system. In this work, multiple cases test how to estimate the parameters of a model with components corresponding to both the physics and the chemical and biological processes (i.e. the biogeochemistry) of the ocean. While demonstrating how to approach this problem type, the results show estimating both sets of parameters simultaneously is better than estimating the physics then the biogeochemistry separately.