6 CONCLUSIONS
This paper describes how to learn the ocean surface
dynamics from an empirical model, EM, that sum-
marises the shallow water equations by an advec-
tion term and an additional term a. This last repre-
sents physical processes such as the Coriolis force,
the gravity force and the viscosity. A data assimila-
tion algorithm is defined for EM that estimates the
velocity field at the first acquisition date and the ad-
ditional term a(t) at each date of the studied inter-
val. a(t) is of major importance for correctly assess-
ing the hidden physical processes and accurately es-
timating motion on the whole image sequence. The
algorithm does not involve any parameter other than
those of the data assimilation framework (error co-
variance matrices). The method has been illustrated
on several SST sequences of Black Sea and has been
quantified by tracking feature points. Moreover, it has
been compared with state-of-the-art optical flow algo-
rithms. The conclusion is that a model of dynamics,
even if simple, improves motion estimation and al-
lows tracking of structures.
This approach may be seen as a first step to model
the physical processes occurring at the ocean surface
from image data. The short-term perspectives will be
to compare the additional term a(t) with forces in-
volved in the shallow water model, in order to further
validate the ability of the empirical model to assess
geophysical processes.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Data have been provided by E. Plotnikov and G. Ko-
rotaev from the Marine Hydrophysical Institute of
Sevastopol, Ukraine.
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