Data assimilation on seasonal cycle of sea surface height anomaly in the south china sea

The Sea Surface Height Anomaly (SSHA) from the TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter data in 1994 is assimilated into a high-resolution model of the South China Sea (SCS) with nudging method. The model results can reveal the seasonal variations of SSHA and its time-space migration characters, at the same time, verify the effect of assimilation.Compared with non-assimilation results, assimilation results can show the seasonal variations of SSHA better, particularly in winter.Futhermore, it can distinguish temporal-spatial migration characters of SSHA clearly, i.e. cold signal of SSHA in northern SCS propagating westward and warm signal of SSHA in central SCS propagating eastward.It shows that as an easy and effective method, data assimilation of the SSHA with nudging method could make the simulated results closer to the available observations.