Combining the Inverse Calculation with the Princeton Ocean Model:
An Application in the Gulf of Mexico
Ruoying He and Robert Weisberg
College of Marine Science
University of South Florida
For a large-scale ocean circulation, assuming the system is geostrophic
and non-dissipative, the conservation of mass and potential vorticity leads
to the condition that the velocity is perpendicular to both density field and
the potential vorticity gradients. Once the density and potential vorticity
fields are known from the in-situ measurement or the climatological data, the
absolute velocity field can be inferred by the so-called P-vector method.
With the climatological T-S field, the monthly circulation fields in the
Gulf of Mexico are calculated and found to be encouraging. With the fact
that the regional domain coastal ocean model often suffers the problem of
defining open boundary transports, the large scale "climatological" currents
calculated from the inverse method may offer a solution to overcome the
problem. An example of combining the inverse results with POM is presented
and discussed.