creator Riley, Jordan advisor Unknown Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) have been used to study transport on the ocean surface. The material barrier and separatrix properties of LCS provide means to compare data-assimilative ocean models. LCS obtained from these models are compared to ocean color images and satellite derived products such as chlorophyll concentration and sea surface temperature from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. The ability of the LCS to match the satellite images provides insight into the accuracy of the ocean models in capturing predominant ow structures. Two of the ocean model systems use the U.S. Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM), and two model systems use the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM). Speci cally, the model systems are the Intra American Seas Nowcast/Forecast System (IASNFS), the NCOM American Seas, the HYCOM + NCODA Global 1/12 , and the HYCOM + NCODA Gulf of Mexico 1/25 . Submitted by Liana Khananashvili (khananashvili@iit.edu) on 2013-08-13T21:20:11Z No. of bitstreams: 2 JRthesis.pdf: 73744673 bytes, checksum: ac08749d7127fe5d0ed2e0f72fe9ae1c (MD5) title page.pdf: 232031 bytes, checksum: e5ac9900df1a75733e46654aad501fe5 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2013-08-13T21:20:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 JRthesis.pdf: 73744673 bytes, checksum: ac08749d7127fe5d0ed2e0f72fe9ae1c (MD5) title page.pdf: 232031 bytes, checksum: e5ac9900df1a75733e46654aad501fe5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-12 M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, December 2012 2012-01-04 2012-12 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/3036 en Thesis born digital application/pdf In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Restricted Access MMAE / Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering Illinois Institute of Technology Affiliated department