Assimilation of coastal acoustic tomography data into a barotropic ocean model

A data assimilation technique was applied to analyze the first coastal acou stic tomography data, obtained in the Neko-Seto Channel of the Seto Inland Sea, Japan on March 2-3, 1999. The ensemble Kalman filter technique accompa nied by the forecast of error covariances by means of the Monte Carlo metho d is found to be best fitted to the present problem because currents in the tomography region are dominated by the strongly nonlinear tidal. vortices. Furthermore, the analyzed results are in better agreement with the shipboa rd ADCP results than those obtained by the inverse analysis of the travel t ime difference data for the pairs of acoustic stations.