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Real-time Reconstruction of Surface Velocities from Satellite Observations in the Alboran Sea
- Source :
- Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC, instname, Remote Sensing; Volume 12; Issue 4; Pages: 724, Remote Sensing, Vol 12, Iss 4, p 724 (2020)
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Special issue Ten Years of Remote Sensing at Barcelona Expert Center.-- 18 pages, 11 figures, 1 table, 1 appendix .-- Altimetric data was produced by the GlobCurrent Data User Element project and is available through its web site: http://www.globcurrent.org. Infrared images are available through the Insitut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC) at https://coo.icm.csic.es/site-page/satellite-data as well as Sea Surface Salinity Maps<br />Surface currents in the Alboran Sea are characterized by a very fast evolution that is not well captured by altimetric maps due to sampling limitations. On the contrary, satellite infrared measurements provide high resolution synoptic images of the ocean at high temporal rate, allowing to capture the evolution of the flow. The capability of Surface Quasi-Geostrophic (SQG) dynamics to retrieve surface currents from thermal images was evaluated by comparing resulting velocities with in situ observations provided by surface drifters. A difficulty encountered comes from the lack of information about ocean salinity. We propose to exploit the strong relationship between salinity and temperature to identify water masses with distinctive salinity in satellite images and use this information to correct buoyancy. Once corrected, our results show that the SQG approach can retrieve ocean currents slightly better to that of near-real-time currents derived from altimetry in general, but much better in areas badly sampled by altimeters such as the area to the east of the Strait of Gibraltar. Although this area is far from the geostrophic equilibrium, the results show that the good sampling of infrared radiometers allows at least retrieving the direction of ocean currents in this area. The proposed approach can be used in other areas of the ocean for which water masses with distinctive salinity can be identified from satellite observations<br />This research was funded by European Space Agency grant number 4000109513/13/I-LG and by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund grants numbers ESP2015-67549-C3-1-R and CTM2016-79474-R. JIF was funded by Fundación General CSIC through Programa ComFuturo<br />With the funding support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S), of the Spanish Research Agency (AEI)
- Subjects :
- Water mass
Buoyancy
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Surface currents
010505 oceanography
Ocean current
Sea surface temperature
Sampling (statistics)
Surface quasi-geostrophic equations
engineering.material
Geodesy
01 natural sciences
engineering
sea surface temperature
altimetry
surface quasi-geostrophic equations
surface currents
General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Satellite
lcsh:Q
Altimeter
Altimetry
lcsh:Science
Geology
Geostrophic wind
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC, instname, Remote Sensing; Volume 12; Issue 4; Pages: 724, Remote Sensing, Vol 12, Iss 4, p 724 (2020)
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....a717623cb7b75093d0d7762584e92c5a