A new method for obtaining velocity and diffusivity from time-dependent distributions of a tracer via the maximum likelihood estimator for the advection-diffusion equation (Q1360429)

For the two-dimensional advection-diffusion equation an inverse problem is considered, namely the estimation of the deterministic parameters velocity, diffusion and decay rate that correspond (best fit) with the time dependent distribution of a tracer. A maximum likelihood estimation method is developed and tested, a good performance being observed. It fares quite well when compared to a finite difference based estimation technique. An application to physical oceanography data, specifically upper ocean dynamics in North Pacific, is presented.