The coupled oceanographic–tomographic analysis and prediction system: A practical means for utilizing high frequency tomography in the world's oceans

Details are presented of a methodology that utilizes acoustic travel time information in an ocean circulation model. Recent developments of this model-oriented tomography are discussed, representing some significant improvements over earlier formulations. More accurate means of determining the arrival times of specific ray paths are detailed, along with a means of estimating possible errors in the calculated travel times. The assimilation of the observed arrival time information into an ocean model is achieved using a Kalman gain, and more advanced expressions for calculating the Kalman gain are presented. A formulation to account for errors in the stated positions of a source and receiver is also presented. It is shown that the methodology performs fairly well in reproducing observed travel time anomalies. However, the model-predicted anomalies along a specific ray path may not always track the observed anomalies for that path when assimilating multiple ray path data. Results indicate that additional work is required to determine a means of handling observed arrival time data without having prior knowledge of the magnitude of errors in the observations. Results from simulation experiments provide estimates of: (1) potential errors when the travel times for ray paths are only sampled at discreet intervals as opposed to continuously and (2) to what degree acoustic data can be expected to “correct” model-predicted fields.