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.