Foto: (De izq. a dcha.) Ismael Hernández, Baptiste Mourre, Jaime Hernández Lasheras, Anne Molcard, Alejandro Orfila y Quim Ballebrera

Esporles, April 28, 2022. Jaime Hernández Lasheras has defended his doctoral thesis supervised by the doctors Baptiste Mourre from the Balearic Islands Coastal Observing and Forecasting System (SOCIB) and Alejandro Orfila from the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB)). The event took place on April 27 at the University of Balearic Islands and could be telematically followed on ZOOM.

This thesis studies the impact of new coastal observing datasets on a high-resolution ocean circulation model using data assimilation.

The study focuses on the Western Mediterranean Sea, an important biological and economical region exposed to strong anthropogenic pressure, where reliable forecasting models are crucial for the management of the coastal systems.

A Local Multimodel Ensemble Optimal Interpolation data assimilation scheme is embedded in the model and configured to be able to ingest both large scale data over the whole domain and high-resolution local observations. 

Three main experiments are developed, in which the impact of glider fleet observations, dense CTD survey and high-frequency radars measurements is evaluated.

Overall, the results obtained in this thesis demonstrate the importance of combining new high resolution coastal observing systems with traditional ones to help constrain the circulation in a regional ocean model, thus enhancing its forecast capabilities.

Source: IMEDEA (UIB-CSIC)