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Ocean Data Assimilation

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Data Assimilation

Abstract

The oceans form a key component of the Earth’s weather and climate system. As well as being important to forecast in their own right to facilitate human activities, such as shipping, fishing, drilling for oil and coastline management and leisure, it is thought that an active ocean model is necessary for all atmospheric predictions on time-scales of a month and longer (Mansfield 1986). Another great challenge for oceanographers is to understand how and where the oceans are absorbing half of all the anthropogenic CO2 being released (Battle et al. 2000), and whether this state of affairs will continue indefinitely. Ocean modelling and ocean data assimilation can play an important role in understanding the changing climate through the reanalysis of historical ocean data. We will return to some of these applications later in the chapter. It is not the intention here to cover all aspects of ocean data assimilation; in particular much of the theory is generic and can be found elsewhere in this book or in many good reviews (e.g. Bennett 1992; Wunsch 1996; Haines 2003a, b, c; see chapters in Part I, Theory). Instead we focus on particular applications and problems related to ocean data assimilation and try to give a perspective on some of the current and future challenges.

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  1. Environmental Systems Science Centre, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AL, UK

    Keith Haines

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  1. Dept. Meteorology, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading, RG66BB, United Kingdom

    William Lahoz

  2. Arapahoe Avenue 373, Boulder, 80302, Colorado, USA

    Boris Khattatov

  3. Atmospheric Science & Technology, Directorate, Environment Canada, Trans-Canada Highway 2121, Dorval, H9P 1J3, Québec, Canada

    Richard Menard

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Haines, K. (2010). Ocean Data Assimilation. In: Lahoz, W., Khattatov, B., Menard, R. (eds) Data Assimilation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74703-1_20

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