A realtime observatory for laboratory simulation of planetary flows
Author(s)
Hill, Christopher N.
Wong, Andrew
Stransky, Scott
Ravela, Sai
Marshall, John C
Date Issued
November 2009
Journal
Experiments in Fluids
Publisher
Springer Science + Business Media B.V.
Citation
Ravela, Sai et al. "A realtime observatory for laboratory simulation of planetary flows." Experiments in Fluids (2010) 48.5, 915–925.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Motivated by the large-scale circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, we develop a system that uses
observations from a laboratory analog to constrain, in real time, a numerical simulation of the laboratory
flow. This system provides a tool to rapidly prototype new methods for state and parameter
estimation, and facilitates the study of prediction, predictability, and transport of geophysical fluids
where observations or numerical simulations would not independently suffice.
A computer vision system is used to extract measurements of the physical simulation. Observations
are used to constrain the model-state of the MIT General Circulation Model in a probabilistic, ensemble based assimilation approach. Using a combination of parallelism, domain decomposition and an efficient
scheme to select ensembles of model-states, we show that estimates that effectively track the fluid state
can be produced. To the best of our knowledge this is the first such observatory for laboratory
analogs of planetary circulation that functions in real time.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-009-0752-0
