DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM | Frontiers in High-Resolution Numerical Modeling of the Ocean

This talk will begin with brief overviews of physical oceanography (the discipline concerned with the motions of the ocean), physical oceanographic observations, and numerical ocean modeling. We will then describe a U.S. Navy-funded project which has occupied me and several collaborators for several years. We have constructed the first global model to simultaneously contain both atmospherically- and tidally-forced oceanic motions at high horizontal resolution. We will describe several operational and scientific applications of this new model, including its use in the planning of the coming wide-swath satellite altimeter mission.