Comparison of data assimilation methods in a regional ocean circulation model for the yellow and east China seas

摘要

The present study aims to evaluate the effects of satellite-based SST (OSTIA) assimilation on a regional ocean circulation model for the Yellow and East China Seas (YECS), using three different assimilation methods: the Ensemble Optimal Interpolation (EnOI), Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF), and 4-Dimensional Variational (4DVAR) techniques, which are widely used in the ocean modeling communities. The model experiments show that an improved initial condition by assimilating the SST affects the seasonal water temperature and water mass distributions of the YECS. In particular, the SST data assimilation influences the temperature structures horizontally and vertically in winter, thereby improving the behavior of the YS warm current water. This is due to the fact that during wintertime the water column is well mixed, which is directly updated by the SST assimilation. The model comparisons indicate that the SST assimilation can improve the model performance in resolving the subsurface structures in wintertime, but has a relatively small impact in summertime due to the strong stratification. The differences among the different assimilation experiments are obvious when the SST was sharply changed due to a typhoon passage. Overall, the EnKF and 4DVAR show better agreement with the observations than the EnOI. The relatively low performance of EnOI under storm conditions may be related with a limitation of EnOI method whereby an analysis is obtained from a number of climatological fields, and thus the typhoon-induced SST changes in short-time scales may not be adequately reflected in the data assimilation.