Numerical approximation of the three-dimensional ocean primitive equations

✍ Scribed by Daniel X. Guo

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 334 KB
• Volume: 22
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0749-159X
• DOI: 10.1002/num.20136

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the numerical approximation of the three‐dimensional ocean primitive equations (PEs), which was studied by Lions et al. We develop a new scheme for the PEs based on the fractional‐step method approximation, which is of second order (and can possibly be made of higher order) in time and reduces the core computation to a two‐dimensional problem. For the testing of the scheme, the numerical simulation for the ocean on a rectangular domain is presented. We focus on the ocean surface and study the nonlinear behavior of western boundary currents (WBCs), with particular emphasis on multiple equilibria—the so‐called double‐gyre phenomena. The wind stress on the ocean surface is the only force. The basic state of the ocean surface consists of two antisymmetric gyres when the wind stress is symmetric. By applying the scheme to the PEs, we are able to investigate most aspects of the ocean circulation. We will report them elsewhere. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2006