Applications of nonlinear optimization method to numerical studies of atmospheric and oceanic sciences

Abstract

Linear singular vector and linear singular value can only describe the evolution of sufficiently small perturbations during the period in which the tangent linear model is valid. With this in mind, the applications of nonlinear optimization methods to the atmospheric and oceanic sciences are introduced, which include nonlinear singular vector (NSV) and nonlinear singular value (NSVA), conditional nonlinear optimal perturbation (CNOP), and their applications to the studies of predictability in numerical weather and climate prediction. The results suggest that the nonlinear characteristics of the motions of atmosphere and oceans can be explored by NSV and CNOP. Also attentions are paid to the introduction of the classification of predictability problems, which are related to the maximum predictable time, the maximum prediction error, and the maximum allowing error of initial value and the parameters. All the information has the background of application to the evaluation of products of numerical weather and climate prediction. Furthermore the nonlinear optimization methods of the sensitivity analysis with numerical model are also introduced, which can give a quantitative assessment whether a numerical model is able to simulate the observations and find the initial field that yield the optimal simulation. Finally, the difficulties in the lack of ripe algorithms are also discussed, which leave future work to both computational mathematics and scientists in geophysics.