Takaya Uchida: Dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) of geostrophically balanced motions from SWOT observations

In his talk, Takaya Uchida presented a novel application of DMD to extract geostrophically balanced velocity fields from sea surface height (SSH) data, including recent high-resolution observations from the SWOT satellite. Addressing the limitations of traditional spectral methods due to SWOT’s coarse temporal resolution, Uchida demonstrated how DMD offers a data-driven, interpretable alternative capable of separating balanced and unbalanced motions such as eddies and internal waves. His results, based on idealized models, realistic simulations, and early SWOT data, suggest that while DMD performs well in identifying mesoscale dynamics, its accuracy remains sensitive to temporal sampling constraints. This work represents a promising step toward improving satellite-based velocity estimates essential for understanding ocean dynamics.