Sea Signals Assimilated

The study is divided into two parts, which are dealing with the development and application of data assimilation approaches. The first part of the study is about the Black Sea. Its main task is to give an estimate of steric heights in the region. One fundamental requirement for the model and data assimilation setup is that the estimate of steric heights on basin scale has to be independent from observations, which can be regarded as the main novelty of the approach. In addition it is the first application of a model setup based on the Nucleus of European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) framework for the region. The second part of the study is about the German Bight. Here we investigate for the first time the potential of FerryBox sea surface temperature (SSS) and salinity (SSS) measurements for the improvement of state estimates. In particular the aliasing problem associated with the M2 tidal signal is discussed. It is shown that certain correlation properties of the SST and SSS fields change significantly during the annual cycle and have a strong impact on the quality of the data assimilation. engl.