Approximation of sea surface velocity field by fitting surrogate two-dimensional flow to scattered measurements

Abstract

In this paper, a rapid approximation method is introduced to estimate the sea surface velocity field based on scattered measurements. The method uses a simplified two-dimensional flow model as a surrogate model, which mimics the real submesoscale flow. The proposed approach treats the interpolation of the flow velocities as an optimization problem, aiming to fit the flow model to the scattered measurements. To ensure consistency between the simulated velocity field and the measured values, the boundary conditions in the numerical simulations are adjusted during the optimization process. Additionally, the relevance of quantity and quality of the scattered measurements is assessed, emphasizing the importance of the measurement locations within the domain as well as explaining how these measurements contribute to the accuracy and reliability of the sea surface velocity field approximation. The proposed methodology has been successfully tested in both synthetic and real-world scenarios, leveraging measurements obtained from Global Positioning System (GPS) drifters and high-frequency (HF) radar systems. The adaptability of this approach for different domains, measurement types and conditions implies that it is suitable for real-world submesoscale scenarios where only an approximation of the sea surface velocity field is sufficient.