W. A. Kuperman
Marine Phys. Lab., Scripps Inst. of Oceanogr., La Jolla, CA 92093
M. B. Porter
New Jersey Inst. of Technol., Newark, NJ 07102
C. Shen
Naval Res. Lab., Washington, DC 20375
The acoustic thermometry of the ocean (ATOC) program involves the use of global acoustic paths to sample the ocean climate. Ultimately, ocean and acoustic model and data must be integrated to produce reliable estimates of climate scale oceanographic phenomena. Here, through simulation, a scaled down model of acoustic data assimilation for oceanographic purposes is studied. A thousand kilometer square ``real'' model ocean that varies temporally and spatially is probed acoustically and the data are assimilated into an appropriate oceanographic model. A methodology of updating the oceanographic model with acoustic data to track the ``real'' ocean is discussed. The technique is based on combining a nonlinear optimization version of matched-field tomography with an optimal interpolation assimilation algorithm linked to an oceanographic model.