Error estimates of B-spline based finite-element methods for the stationary quasi-geostrophic equations of the ocean

Abstract

This paper presents theoretical error estimates of B-spline based finite-element methods for the streamfunction formulation of the stationary quasi-geostrophic equations, which describe the large scale wind-driven ocean circulation. We introduce variational formulations of the streamfunction formulation inspired by the interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin method. Dirichlet boundary conditions are weakly enforced in the formulations and stabilizations are achieved via Nitsche’s method. Existence and uniqueness of the approximation are proved and optimal error estimates in the energy norm are demonstrated under a small data assumption. Numerical experiments are performed to verify the theoretical error estimates on rectangular and L-shape geometries.