Contour advection with surgery: a technique for investigating finescale structure in tracer transport

Abstract

We present a trajectory technique, contour advection with surgery (CAS), for tracing the evolution of material contours in a specified (including observed) evolving flow. CAS uses the algorithms developed by Dritschel for contour dynamics/surgery to trace the evolution of specified contours. The contours are represented by a series of particles, whch are advected by a specified, gridded, wind distribution. The resolution of the contours is presented by continually adjusting the number of particles, and finescale features are produced that are not present in the input data (and cannot easily be generated using standard trajectory technique). The CAS technique enables examination of atmospheric tracer transport at previously unattainable resolution. -from Authors