Understanding the complex dynamics of coastal upwelling is essential for coastal ocean dynamics, phytoplankton blooms, and pollution transport. Atmospheric-driven coastal upwelling often occurs when strong alongshore winds and the Coriolis force combine to displace warmer surface waters offshore, leading to upward motions of deeper cooler, nutrient-dense waters to replace these surface waters. Using the models of the MIT Multidisciplinary Simulation, Estimation, and Assimilation System (MSEAS) group, we conduct a large set of simulation sensitivity studies to determine which variables are dominant controls for upwelling events in the Monterey Bay region. Our motivations include determining the dominant atmospheric fluxes and the causes of high-frequency fluctuations found in ocean thermal balances. We focus on the first upwelling event from August 1-5, 2006 in Monterey Bay that occurred during the Monterey Bay 06 (MB06) at-sea experiment, for which MSEAS data-assimilative baseline simulations already existed.

Using the thermal energy (temperature), salinity and momentum (velocity) conservation equations, full ocean fields in the region as well as both control volume (flux) balances and local differential term-by-term balances for the upwelling event events were computed. The studies of ocean fields concentrate on specific depths: surface-0m, thermocline-30m and undercurrent-150m. Effects of differing atmospheric forcing contributions (wind stress, surface heating/cooling, and evaporation-precipitation) on these full fields and on the volume and term-by-term balances are analyzed. Tidal effects are quantified utilizing pairs of simulations in which tides are either included or not. Effects of data assimilation are also examined.

We find that the wind stress forcing is the most important dynamical parameter in explaining the extent and shape of the upwelling event. This is verified using our large set of sensitivity studies and examining the heat flux balances. The assimilation of data has also an impact because this first upwelling event occurs during the initialization. Tidal forcing and, to a lesser extent, the daily atmospheric and data assimilation cycles explain the higher frequency fluctuations found in the volume averaged time rate of change of thermal energy.

A new generation of efficient parallel, multi-scale, and interdisciplinary ocean models is required for better understanding and accurate predictions. The purpose of this thesis is to quantitatively identify promising numerical methods that are suitable to such predictions. In order to fulfill this purpose, current efforts towards creating new ocean models are reviewed, an understanding of the most promising methods used by other researchers is developed, the most promising existing methods are studied and applied to idealized cases, new methods are incubated and evaluated by solving test problems, and important numerical issues related to efficiency are examined.

The results of other research groups towards developing the second generation of ocean models are first reviewed. Next, the Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for solving advection-diffusion problems is described, including a discussion on schemes for solving higher order derivatives. The discrete formulation for advection-diffusion problems is detailed and implementation issues are discussed. The Hybrid Discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) Finite Element Method (FEM) is identified as a promising new numerical scheme for ocean simulations. For the first time, a DG FEM scheme is used to solve ocean biogeochemical advection-diffusion-reaction equations on a two- dimensional idealized domain, and p-adaptivity across constituents is examined. Each aspect of the numerical solution is examined separately, and p-adaptive strategies are explored. Finally, numerous solver-preconditioner combinations are benchmarked to identify an efficient solution method for inverting matrices, which is necessary for implicit time integration schemes. From our quantitative incubation of numerical schemes, a number of recommendations on the tools necessary to solve dynamical equations for multiscale ocean predictions are provided.

A fundamental requirement in realistic computational geophysical fluid dynamics is the optimal estimation of gridded fields and of spatial-temporal scales directly from the spatially irregular and multivariate data sets that are collected by varied instruments and sampling schemes. In this work, we derive and utilize new schemes for the mapping and dynamical inference of ocean fields in complex multiply-connected domains, study the computational properties of our new mapping schemes, and derive and investigate new schemes for adaptive estimation of spatial and temporal scales. Objective Analysis (OA) is the statistical estimation of fields using the Bayesian- based Gauss-Markov theorem, i.e. the update step of the Kalman Filter. The existing multi-scale OA approach of the Multidisciplinary Simulation, Estimation and Assimilation System consists of the successive utilization of Kalman update steps, one for each scale and for each correlation across scales. In the present work, the approach is extended to field mapping in complex, multiply-connected, coastal regions and archipelagos. A reasonably accurate correlation function often requires an estimate of the distance between data and model points, without going across complex land- forms. New methods for OA based on estimating the length of optimal shortest sea paths using the Level Set Method (LSM) and Fast Marching Method (FMM) are derived, implemented and utilized in general idealized and realistic ocean cases. Our new methodologies could improve widely-used gridded databases such as the climatological gridded fields of the World Ocean Atlas (WOA) since these oceanic maps were computed without accounting for coastline constraints. A new FMM-based methodology for the estimation of absolute velocity under geostrophic balance in complicated domains is also outlined. Our new schemes are compared with other approaches, including the use of stochastically forced differential equations (SDE). We find that our FMM-based scheme for complex, multiply-connected, coastal regions is more efficient and accurate than the SDE approach. We also show that the field maps obtained using our FMM-based scheme do not require postprocessing (smoothing) of fields. The computational properties of the new mapping schemes are studied in detail. We find that higher-order schemes improve the accuracy of distance estimates. We also show that the covariance matrices we estimate are not necessarily positive definite because the Weiner Khinchin and Bochner relationships for positive definiteness are only valid for convex simply-connected domains. Several approaches to overcome this issue are discussed and qualitatively evaluated. The solutions we propose include introducing a small process noise or reducing the covariance matrix based on the dominant singular value decomposition. We have also developed and utilized novel methodologies for the adaptive estimation of spatial-temporal scales from irregularly spaced ocean data. The three novel methodologies are based on the use of structure functions, short term Fourier transform and second generation wavelets. To our knowledge, this is the first time that adaptive methodologies for the spatial-temporal scale estimation are proposed. The ultimate goal of all these methods would be to create maps of spatial and temporal scales that evolve as new ocean data are fed to the scheme. This would potentially be a significant advance to the ocean community for better understanding and sampling of ocean processes.