Comparison of the Adjoint and Adjoint-Free 4dVar Assimilation of the Hydrographic and Velocity Observations in the Adriatic Sea

Abstract

Performance of the adjoint and adjoint-free 4-dimensional variational (4dVar) data assimilation techniques is compared in application to the hydrographic surveys and velocity observations collected in the Adriatic Sea in 2006. Assimilating the data into the Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM) has shown that both methods deliver similar reduction of the cost function and demonstrate comparable forecast skill at approximately the same computational expense. The obtained optimal states were, however, significantly different in terms of distance from the background state: application of the adjoint method resulted in a 3040 larger departure, mostly due to the excessive level of a geostrophic motions in the southern basin of the Sea that was not covered by observations.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 10, 2015
Accession Number
AD1014825

Entities

People

  • Andrey Koch
  • Christopher Beattie
  • Max I. Yaremchuk
  • Paul J. Martin

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Adriatic Sea
  • Algorithms
  • Boundary Layer
  • Coefficients
  • Computational Science
  • Computations
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Equations
  • Four Dimensional
  • Kalman Filters
  • Mathematical Filters
  • Military Research
  • Oceanography
  • Oceans
  • Square Roots
  • Statistics
  • Time Intervals

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Mathematics or Statistics
  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers