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Using a dynamical advection to reconstruct a part of the SSH evolution in the context of SWOT, application to the Mediterranean Sea

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Abstract

The main oceanographic objective of the future SWOT mission is to better characterize the ocean mesoscale and sub-mesoscale circulation, by observing a finer range of ocean topography dynamics down to 20 km wavelength. Despite the very high spatial resolution of the future satellite, it will not capture the time evolution of the shorter mesoscale signals, such as the formation and evolution of small eddies. SWOT will have an exact repeat cycle of 21 days, with near repeats around 5–10 days, depending on the latitude. Here, we investigate a technique to reconstruct the missing 2D SSH signal in the time between two satellite revisits. We use the dynamical interpolation (DI) technique developed by Ubelmann et al. (2015). Based on potential vorticity (hereafter PV) conservation using a one and a half layer quasi-geostrophic model, it features an active advection of the SSH field. This model has been tested in energetic open ocean regions such as the Gulf Stream and the Californian Current, and has given promising results. Here, we test this model in the Western Mediterranean Sea, a lower energy region with complex small scale physics, and compare the SSH reconstruction with the high-resolution Symphonie model. We investigate an extension of the simple dynamical model including a separated mean circulation. We find that the DI gives a 16–18% improvement in the reconstruction of the surface height and eddy kinetic energy fields, compared with a simple linear interpolation, and a 37% improvement in the Northern Current subregion. Reconstruction errors are higher during winter and autumn but statistically, the improvement from the DI is also better for these seasons.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge Claude Estournel for the Symphonie OGCM data used here, Florent Lyard for the modal decomposition and Romain Escudier for his figures. M Rogé was supported through a PhD grant from Centres National des Etudes Spatiales and Collecte Localisation Satellite. This work is a contribution to the French CNES-TOSCA programme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Etude en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiale, 14 avenue Edouard Belin, 31400, Toulouse, France

    Marine Rogé & Rosemary Morrow

  2. Collecte Localisation Satellite, 8-10 Rue Hermes, 31520, Ramonville St-Agne, France

    Clément Ubelmann

  3. Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, 18 avenue Edouard Belin, 31400, Toulouse, France

    Gérald Dibarboure

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  1. Marine Rogé
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  2. Rosemary Morrow
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  3. Clément Ubelmann
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  4. Gérald Dibarboure
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Correspondence to Marine Rogé.

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Responsible Editor: Ananda Pascual

This article is part of the Topical Collection on the 48th International Liège Colloquium on Ocean Dynamics, Liège, Belgium, 23–27 May 2016

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Rogé, M., Morrow, R., Ubelmann, C. et al. Using a dynamical advection to reconstruct a part of the SSH evolution in the context of SWOT, application to the Mediterranean Sea. Ocean Dynamics 67, 1047–1066 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-017-1073-0

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