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2002 LAPCOD Meeting
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A method for assimilation of Lagrangian tracer measurements
L. Kuznetsov, K. Ide, C.K.R.T. Jones
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
leonid@amath.unc.edu(Abstract received 09/30/2002 for session D)
ABSTRACT
A new method that affords direct assimilation of Lagrangian tracer measurements into the ocean model is presented. The model is augmented with tracer advection equations and the correlations between the flow and the tracers are tracked via the extended Kalman filter. The augmented model state vector includes tracer coordinates and is updated through the correlations to the observed tracers. The technique works efficiently when the observations are accurate and frequent enough. Low quality data and large intervals between observations can lead to the divergence of the scheme. Nonlinear effects, responsible for the failure of the extended Kalman filter, are triggered by the exponential separation rate of tracer trajectories in the neighborhood of the saddle points of the velocity field. Implications of these results for optimal launching strategy design and an extension of our method to realistic ocean models are discussed.
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2002 LAPCOD Meeting, Key Largo, Florida, December 12-16, 2000