Reconstruction of oceanic flow characteristics from quasi‐Lagrangian data: 1. Approach and mathematical methods

We describe a nontraditional method for processing data derived from quasi‐Lagrangian tracers. The approach relies on a representation of the thermohydrodynamic field as a set of a finite number of functions (modes) with the subsequent computation of mode amplitudes from quasi‐Lagrangian data. This requires special methods for calculating mode components of the thermohydrodynamic field from Lagrangian observations. Also, because of the quasi‐Lagrangian nature of the data there are special problems caused by the need to filter in both space and time and to account for motions unresolved by such observations. The former problem is addressed by a filtering procedure based on a variational criteria and Pontryagin's principle. To handle the latter problem, a subgrid parameterization scheme appropriate for Lagrangian data is proposed.