approved: Geoffrey A. Hollinger Underwater robots beneath ocean waves can benefit from feedforward control to reduce position error. This thesis proposes a method using Model Predictive Control (MPC) to predict and counteract future disturbances from an ocean wave field. The MPC state estimator employs a Linear Wave Theory (LWT) solver to approximate the component fluid dynamics under a wave fi...

Wind, wave and current interactions control the boundary fluxes, momentum and energy exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean, and within the water column. The wind wave effect on the circulation is investigated in a threedimensional time-dependant ocean circulation model. This POM (Princeton Ocean Model) based model is implemented with realistic coastlines in South China Sea and emphasize...

Rossby waves are an important phenomenon, linking processes in the west of ocean basins with forcing that occurred earlier in the east. We show evidence for such features in satellite-derived datasets of sea-surface height, temperature and ocean colour, using a section of the south Indian Ocean as an example. We discuss the possible mechanisms for an effect on chlorophyll, and we investigate th...

Retrieval of two dimensional ocean wave spectra from synthetic aperture radar data has been performed for several years using a variety of di erent approaches. Due to the complexity of the problem potential users of SAR ocean wave retrieval schemes like weather centers have found it diÆcult to judge about the quality and the bene t of SAR retrieved wave spectra. The present study gives insight ...

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) yields high resolution two dimensional images of the radar backscatter properties of the sea surface and can thus be used to measure wind field and sea state from space independent of daylight and cloud coverage. This makes SAR particularly suited to investigate severe weather events over the oceans. ERS SAR wave mode is acquired over the ocean every 200 km along ...

The ocean plays a vital role in our environment. As such, an ability to model and predict its circulation can be of enormous value. Modelling and prediction of ocean currents in coastal regions is important for many reasons, including innuences on recreation, navigation, algal bloom formation, eeuent dispersion, search and rescue operations, and oil spills. Ocean currents near the coast also aa...

The impacts of global climate change on the Basque coast and the pelagic systems within the southeastern Bay of Biscay are reviewed. Climate projections under greenhouse gas emission scenarios indicate that this area will experience changes in climate throughout the 21st century, including warming of surface air (especially heat wave episodes), intensification of extreme daily rainfall (10%), w...

A numerical model for the global tsunamis computation constructed by KOWALIK et al. (2005), is applied to the tsunami of 26 December, 2004 in the World Ocean from 80 S to 69 N with spatial resolution of one minute. Because the computational domain includes close to 200 million grid points, a parallel version of the code was developed and run on a Cray X1 supercomputer. An energy flux function i...

If wave breaking modifies the Lagrangian fluid orbital paths by inducing an uncertainty in the path itself and this uncertainty on wave motion time scales is observable as additive noise, it is shown that within the context of a wave/current interaction model for basin and shelf scale motions it persists on long time scales. The model of McWilliams et al. (2004) provides the general framework f...

We present a scheme for the animation of ocean waves in a recognizable drawn animation cartoon style. This consists principally of two parts: the first part is the ocean surface generated by a procedural model which governs the dynamics of the ocean surface and rendered with stylized whitewater forms over the ocean wave crests; the second part is water effects caused by interactions between the...