Domain-Decomposed Lagrangian Data Assimilation for Drifting Sea-Ice Floe Dynamics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Li, Danyang, Taylor, John, Deng, Quanling
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Li, Danyang
Taylor, John
Deng, Quanling
author_facet Li, Danyang
Taylor, John
Deng, Quanling
contents Sea ice dynamics are crucial to the global climate system, yet traditional continuum (e.g., viscous-plastic) models often fail to represent the discrete floe interactions that dominate in the marginal ice zone. Lagrangian discrete element methods (DEMs) resolve floe-scale physics more realistically, but their high particle counts make ensemble data assimilation (DA) more expensive. We consider a highly-simplified floe model and propose a scalable, domain-decomposed DA framework that couples Lagrangian particle observations with an ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF) to recover the underlying ocean flow field in a multiscale setting. The Eulerian domain is first partitioned into subdomains. We then impose an ETKF in each subdomain to recover the local fine-scale ocean features. A Gaussian-weighted blending step then reconstructs a globally consistent flow field across subdomain boundaries. Numerical experiments demonstrate consistently better skill scores that are characterised by normalised root mean square error (NRMSE) and pattern correlation coefficients (PCC), compared to the global and expensive DA baseline. Results suggest that the domain-decomposed DA method is an alternative, scalable approach for particle-based sea-ice floe dynamics and ocean flow recovery.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_17971
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Domain-Decomposed Lagrangian Data Assimilation for Drifting Sea-Ice Floe Dynamics
Li, Danyang
Taylor, John
Deng, Quanling
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Sea ice dynamics are crucial to the global climate system, yet traditional continuum (e.g., viscous-plastic) models often fail to represent the discrete floe interactions that dominate in the marginal ice zone. Lagrangian discrete element methods (DEMs) resolve floe-scale physics more realistically, but their high particle counts make ensemble data assimilation (DA) more expensive. We consider a highly-simplified floe model and propose a scalable, domain-decomposed DA framework that couples Lagrangian particle observations with an ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF) to recover the underlying ocean flow field in a multiscale setting. The Eulerian domain is first partitioned into subdomains. We then impose an ETKF in each subdomain to recover the local fine-scale ocean features. A Gaussian-weighted blending step then reconstructs a globally consistent flow field across subdomain boundaries. Numerical experiments demonstrate consistently better skill scores that are characterised by normalised root mean square error (NRMSE) and pattern correlation coefficients (PCC), compared to the global and expensive DA baseline. Results suggest that the domain-decomposed DA method is an alternative, scalable approach for particle-based sea-ice floe dynamics and ocean flow recovery.
title Domain-Decomposed Lagrangian Data Assimilation for Drifting Sea-Ice Floe Dynamics
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.17971