Inversion of Initial Field Based on a Temperature Transport Adjoint

Abstract

The setting of initial values is one of the key problems in ocean numerical prediction, with the accuracy of sea water temperature (SWT) simulation and prediction greatly affected by the initial field quality. In this paper, we describe the development of an adjoint assimilation model of temperature transport used to invert the initial temperature field by assimilating the observed data of sea surface temperature (SST) and vertical temperature. Two ideal experiments were conducted to verify the feasibility and validity of this method. By assimilating the “observed data”, the mean absolute error (MAE) between the simulated temperature data and the “observed data” decreased from 1.74 °C and 1.87 °C to 0.13 °C and 0.14 °C, respectively. The spatial distribution of SST difference and the comparison of vertical data also indicate that the regional error of vertical data assimilation is smaller. In the practical experiment, the monthly average temperature field provided by World Ocean Atlas 2018 was selected as background filed and optimized by assimilating the SST data and Argo vertical temperature observation data, to invert the temperature field at 0 a.m. on 1 December 2014 in the South China Sea. Through data assimilation, MAE was reduced from 1.29 °C to 0.65 °C. In terms of vertical observations data comparison and SST spatial distribution, the temperature field obtained by inversion is in good agreement with SST and Argo observations.