A project is undergoing at the Joint Research Centre of the European
Commission (JRC-EC) in the Marine Environment unit of the Space Applications
Institute (SAI/ME) to assimilate altimetric data in a primitive equation
model using a four-dimensional varaitional assimilation scheme. The aim
is to obtain a description of the dynamics in upwelling areas, to be used
for studying the relations between the evolution of the fisheries and the
underlying flow in those areas.
After a description of the hydrodynamic model, with emphasis on those
aspects that make it suitable for assimilating data in upwelling coastal
areas, the planed strategy for the assimilation of sea-surface height and
sea-surface temperature data is presented.