Sea Surface Flow Estimation via Ensemble-based Variational Data Assimilation

Shengze Cai (1, 2) , Etienne Mémin (3, 1) , Yin Yang (4) , Chao Xu (2)

1 FLUMINANCE - Fluid Flow Analysis, Description and Control from Image Sequences
2 State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology
3 IRMAR - Institut de Recherche Mathématique de Rennes
4 IRSTEA - Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture

In this paper, we propose a data assimilation method for consistently estimating the velocity fields from a whole image sequence depicting the evolution of sea surface temperature transported by oceanic surface flow. The estimator is conducted through an ensemble-based variational data assimilation , which is designed by combining the advantages of two approaches: the ensemble Kalman filter and the variational data assimilation. This idea allows us to obtain the optimal initial condition as well as the full system trajectory. In order to extract the velocity fields from fluid images, a surface quasi-geostrophic model representing the generic evolution of the temperature field of the flow, and the optical flow constraint equation derived from the image intensity constancy assumption, are involved in the assimilation context. Numerical experimental evaluation is presented on a synthetic fluid image sequence.

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère; Milieux fluides et réactifs; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Shengze Cai, Etienne Mémin, Yin Yang, Chao Xu. Sea Surface Flow Estimation via Ensemble-based Variational Data Assimilation. ACC 2018 - Annual American Control Conference, Jun 2018, Milwaukee, WI, United States. pp.3496-3501, ⟨10.23919/ACC.2018.8430804⟩. ⟨hal-01971389⟩