2015, Rotundo, Nella, Kim, Tae-Yeon, Jiang, Wen, Heltai, Luca, Fried, Eliot

We present the error analysis of a B-spline based finite-element approximation of the stream-function formulation of the large scale winddriven ocean circulation. In particular, we derive optimal error estimates for h-refinement using a Nitsche-type variational formulations of the two simplied linear models of the stationary quasigeostrophic equations, namely the Stommel and StommelMunk models. Numerical results on rectangular and embedded geometries confirm the error analysis.