Section: New Results

Turbulent ocean dynamics at super resolution: validation

Participants : Hussein Yahia [correspondant], Véronique Garçon, Joël Sudre.

Synoptic determination of ocean circulation using data acquired from space, with a coherent depiction of its turbulent characteristics, from large scale ocean circulation down to super resolution of remote sensing optical sensors, remains a fundamental challenge in Oceanography. This determination has the potential of revealing all aspects of the ocean's dynamic variability on a wide range of spatio-temporal scales and will enhance our understanding of ocean-atmosphere exchanges at super resolution, as required in the present context of climate change. We show a 4-year time series of spatial super resolution (4 kms) turbulent ocean dynamics generated from satellite data using emerging nonlinear physics, low resolution dynamics and super resolution oceanic sea surface temperature data. The method at its core consists in propagating across the scales the low resolution dynamics in a multi resolution analysis computed on adimensional critical transition information. The resulting vector field is validated with Lagrangian buoy data at super resolution obtained from NASA Global Drifter Program.

A movie showing the evolution of turbulent ocean dynamics around South Africa in the Algunas current has been made with the help and support of Inria DIRCOM project (C. Blonz, P.-O. Gaumin).

Supporting grant: ICARODE project.

Publications: [30] , [38] .