SC740 SEMINAR WEEK 11

TOPIC: Application of data assimilation techniques in physical oceanography

By Dr. Igor Shulman

Institute of Marine Sciences

University of Southern Mississippi

Summary and Comments : By Lee Emmanwori

Dr. Igor introduced the existing data assimilation techniques in numerical modeling of oceanic processes. He focused on three cases of application of the data assimilation techniques namely :

. Assimilation of satellite derived data into the NRL layered ocean model- a high spatial resolution with low temporal resolution.

. Assimilation of HF Doppler radar data into the hydrodynamical model of the Monterey Bay-a high spatial and temporal resolution over the small area.

. Assimilation of profilers, moored arrays- a high temporal resolution at a single point.

He described KALMAM FILTER(KF) which involves a linear stochastic system that describes

temperature, salinity and noise with linear measurements such as wind stress.

Xk+1 = FkXk + BkUk + Wk

Zk = HkXk + Vk

where

Xk is the ocean state at the time k

Z is the vector of observations

F is the model and

H is the observation operator

The noses W & V are unbiased random processes. He defined

d x = Kd z

where K is the Kalman gain matrix defined as

K = EbHT(HEbHT + R)-1

where Eb is the error covariance matrix of the background. The error covariance matrix of the analysis is given by

Ea = (I-KH)Eb and this equation is also called error prediction equation.

Dr. Igor also talked about Optimum Interpolation (OI) which uses the full numerical model instead of the linear state transition. He said that the OI can be implemented in the form of a relaxation method called nudging.