Enriched evolution of global sea surface height via generalized Schrodinger bridge and Fokker-Planck solver

TL;DR

This paper models the evolution of global sea surface height over 20 years using a generalized Schrödinger bridge approach, introducing a numerical method validated for convergence, revealing regional sea level changes influenced by ocean mesoscale eddies.

Contribution

It presents a novel application of the generalized Schrödinger bridge and Fokker-Planck solver to model sea level rise, with an iterative numerical method validated for this purpose.

Findings

Characterized sea level evolution from 1994 to 2014.

Validated convergence of the proposed numerical method.

Revealed regional sea level changes due to ocean mesoscale eddies.

Abstract

Global warming has been discussed for decades and is one of most popular topics in different areas of research. The sea level rise in recent decades, which was mainly caused by global warming, has drawn great attentions and interests from scientists because it is crucial to human life as well as the entire earth system. A generalized Schrodinger bridge problem with an underlying energy landscape is used to model this process. We introduce an iterative numerical method for the associated mixed control problem with a given initial distribution (sea level height at the year 1994) and a given ending distribution (sea level height at the year 2014). The convergence of the introduced iterative method for finding the optimal transformation path of SSH is validated numerically. The evolution of sea level height from August 1994 to August 2014 has been characterized during the model simulation and the sea level height evolutions in several significant areas induced by ocean mesoscale eddies are reveled.