Tomography data assimilation in an ocean general circulation model of the Mediterranean Sea

Ocean acoustic tomography is a technique for observing the dynamic behaviour of ocean processes by measuring the changes in travel time of acoustic signal transmitted over a number of ocean paths. Its ability for large scale integrated measurements makes tomography a candidate for a permanent and continuous observational network for monitoring oceanic circulation at basin scale. However the use of tomography data in studies involving numerical modelling raises several theoretical and practical difficulties. The variational approach is proposed to assimilate the tomography data collected during the THETIS experiments in the primitive equation model of the western Mediterranean Sea within the EUROMODEL project.<>