On the use of the data- and physics-driven approaches for quasi-geostrophic double-gyre problem: application of Genetic Programming

In this study, we investigate Genetic Programming as a data-driven approach to reconstruct eddy-resolved simulations of the double-gyre problem. Stemming from Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming is a method of symbolic regression which can be used to extract temporal or spatial functionalities from simulation snapshots.  The double-gyre circulation is simulated by a stratified quasi-geostrophic model which is solved using high-resolution CABARET scheme. The simulation results are compressed using proper orthogonal decomposition and the time variant coefficients of the reduced-order model are fed into a Genetic Programming code. Due to the multi-scale nature of double-gyre problem, we decompose the time signal into a meandering and a fluctuating component. We next explore the parameter space of objective functions in Genetic Programming to capture the two components separately. The data-driven predictions are cross-compared with original double-gyre signal in terms of statistical moments such as variance and auto-correlation function.