Toward Optimal Choices of Control Space Representation for Geophysical Data Assimilation

Abstract

In geophysical data assimilation, observations shed light on a control parameter space through a model, a statistical prior, and an optimal combination of these sources of information. This control space can be a set of discrete parameters, or, more often in geophysics, part of the state space, which is distributed in space and time. When the control space is continuous, it must be discretized for numerical modeling. This discretization, in this paper called a representation of this distributed parameter space, is always fixed a priori. In this paper, the representation of the control space is considered a degree of freedom on its own. The goal of the paper is to demonstrate that one could optimize it to perform data assimilation in optimal conditions. The optimal representation is then chosen over a large dictionary of adaptive grid representations involving several space and time scales. First, to motivate the importance of the representation choice, this paper discusses the impact of a change of representation on the posterior analysis of data assimilation and its connection to the reduction of uncertainty. It is stressed that in some circumstances (atmospheric chemistry, in particular) the choice of a proper representation of the control space is essential to set the data assimilation statistical framework properly. A possible mathematical framework is then proposed for multiscale data assimilation. To keep the developments simple, a measure of the reduction of uncertainty is chosen as a very simple optimality criterion. Using this criterion, a cost function is built to select the optimal representation. It is a function of the control space representation itself. A regularization of this cost function, based on a statistical mechanical analogy, guarantees the existence of a solution. This allows numerical optimization to be performed on the representation of control space. The formalism is then applied to the inverse modeling of an accidental release of an atmospheric contaminant at European scale, using real data.