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2002 LAPCOD Meeting
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Lagrangian Predictability, Hyperbolicity, and Optimal Observing Strategies for the Ocean
A. D. Kirwan, Jr., M. Toner, and A. C. Poje
University of Delaware
adk@udel.edu(Abstract received 09/25/2002 for session D)
ABSTRACT
Predictability studies in meteorology tend to focus on error growth on Eulerian time-scales. In contrast Lagrangian predictability plays a bigger role in oceanography because of the availability of trajectory data from drifters and floats. Tracking and mapping the hyperbolic trajectories that govern the time evolving boundaries of coherent structures is crucial to understanding Lagrangian predictability. We summarize results from basin-scale numerical drifter experiments that employ Lagrangian templates based on a-priori knowledge of hyperbolic trajectories in the model field. Using a reduced gravity primitive equation model it was found that drifter deployments aligned along outflowing material curves provided the maximum Lagrangian data coverage and hence highest accuracy of Eulerian fields reconstructed from the Lagrangian data. This result is in contrast to other strategies based on random deployments or deployments in high velocity regions. Preliminary results from a study with a data assimilating general circulation model of the Gulf of Mexico are also discussed. The talk concludes with an outline of a Lagrangian predictability experiment.
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2002 LAPCOD Meeting, Key Largo, Florida, December 12-16, 2000