Assimilation of geosat altimeter data for the Agulhas Current using the ensemble Kalman filter with a quasigeostrophic model

The ring-shedding process in the Agulhas Current is studied using the ensemble Kalman filter to assimilate Geosat altimeter data into a two-layer quasigeostrophic ocean model. The properties of the ensemble Kalman filter are further explored with focus on the analysis scheme and the use of gridded data. The Geosat data consist of 10 fields of gridded sea surface height anomalies separated 10 days apart that are added to a climatic mean field. This corresponds to a huge number of data values, and a data reduction scheme must be applied to increase the efficiency of the analysis procedure. Further, it is illustrated how one can resolve the rank problem occurring when a too large dataset or a small ensemble is used.