Section: Application Domains

Oceanography and the Ocean-Atmosphere System

Participants : Eric Blayo, Pierre-Antoine Bouttier, Vincent Chabot, Laurent Debreu, Jérémie Demange, Marc Honnorat, Christine Kazantsev, Eugène Kazantsev, François-Xavier Le Dimet, Florian Lemarié, Bénédicte Lemieux-Dudon, Maëlle Nodet, Antoine Rousseau, Manel Tayachi, Arthur Vidard.

Keywords: Multi-resolution, Coupling Methods, Data Assimilation, Ocean, Atmosphere

Understanding and forecasting the ocean circulation is currently the subject of an intensive research effort by the international scientific community. This effort was primarily motivated by the crucial role of the ocean in determining the Earth's climate, particularly from the perspective of global change. In addition, important recent research programs are aimed at developing operational oceanography, i.e. near real-time forecasting of ocean circulation, with applications for ship routing, fisheries, weather forecasting, etc. Another related field is coastal oceanography, dealing for example with pollution, littoral planning, or the ecosystems management. Local and regional agencies are currently very interested in numerical modelling systems for coastal areas.

Both ocean-alone models and coupled ocean-atmosphere models are being developed to address these issues. In this context, the MOISE project-team conducts efforts mainly on the following topics:

• Multi-resolution approaches and coupling methods: Many applications in coastal and operational oceanography require high resolution local models. These models can either be forced at their boundaries by some known data, or be dynamically coupled with a large-scale coarser resolution model. Such model interactions require specific mathematical studies on open boundary conditions, refinement methods (like mesh refinement or stochastic downscaling), and coupling algorithms. The latter have also to be studied in the context of ocean-atmosphere coupled systems.

• Advanced numerical schemes: Most ocean models use simple finite difference schemes on structured grids. We are seeking for better schemes allowing both accuracy and good conservation properties, and dealing with irregular boundaries and bottom topography.

• Data assimilation methods for ocean modelling systems: The main difficulties encountered when assimilating data in ocean or atmosphere models are the huge dimension of the model state vector (typically ${10}^6$-${10}^8$), the strongly nonlinear character of the dynamics, and our poor knowledge of model error statistics. In this context, we are developing reduced order sequential and variational data assimilation methods addressing the aforementioned difficulties. We are also working on the assimilation of lagrangian data, of sequences of images, and on the design of data assimilation methods for multi-resolution models and for coupled systems.

Most of these studies are led in strong interaction with geophysicists, in particular from the Laboratoire des Ecoulements Géophysiques et Industriels (LEGI, Grenoble).