Abstract: To carry out the data assimilation of sea temperature observations the adjoint method is applied, which can provide an accurate initial temperature field for numerical prediction. For simplicity we consider only a one-dimensional sea temperature model, what are discussed in this paper involve, the idea of the adjoint method, the optimal procedure and the finite difference schemes of sea temperature control equation and adjoint equation. Numerical results are also presented for describing the varying sea temperature field.

Key words: sea temperature, data assimilation, discrete adjoint operator method