Continuation Methods and Their Applications in Physical Oceanography

Henk A. Dijkstra

Professor of Physical Oceanography
Department of Atmospheric Science
Colorado State University

In recent years, numerical bifurcation theory has been applied extensively to problems in physical oceanography and climate dynamics. In this presentation, I will first focus on the use of so-called continuation methods for coupled PDEs to determine physical mechanisms of the ocean circulation and its variability. The use of these methods has also lead to the development of fully-implicit ocean models. In the latter models, substantially larger time steps can be taken than in traditional ocean models. In addition, the implicit models can be used efficiently in variational data-assimilation methods as they do not require an explicit adjoint. An overview will be given of these new methods and their capabilities will be illustrated using a simple model of the midlatitude ocean circulation.

A special trip to the North Carolina Outer Banks accompanies this NEDD.

Last Update: April 6, 2005