Toward an extended-geostrophic Euler-Poincare model for mesoscale oceanographic flow

Conference · Wed Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998

OSTI ID:663378

Allen, J S; Newberger, P A ^[1]; Holm, D D ^[2]

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1. Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States). Coll. of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences
2. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)

The authors consider the motion of a rotating, continuously stratified fluid governed by the hydrostatic primitive equations (PE). An approximate Hamiltonian (L1) model for small Rossby number {var_epsilon} is derived for application to mesoscale oceanographic flow problems. Numerical experiments involving a baroclinically unstable oceanic jet are utilized to assess the accuracy of the L1 model compared to the PE and to other approximate models, such as the quasigeostrophic (QG) and the geostrophic momentum (GM) equations. The results of the numerical experiments for moderate Rossby number flow show that the L1 model gives accurate solutions with errors substantially smaller than QG or GM.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., Theoretical Div., NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States); Office of Naval Research, Washington, DC (United States); National Science Foundation, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 663378
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--98-202; CONF-971242--; ON: DE98003470; CNN: Grant N00014-93-1-1301; Grant OCE-9314317
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
58 GEOSCIENCES
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
FLOW MODELS
NUMERICAL SOLUTION
OCEANIC CIRCULATION