Potential use of microwave sea surface temperatures for the estimation of ocean currents

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the emerging potential offered by satellite microwave radiometer SST measurements to complement altimeter data to quantitatively derive surface ocean currents. The proposed methodology does not follow standard sequential temporal analysis but follows the application of the Surface Quasi-Geostrophic (SQG) theory. Accordingly, under favourable environmental conditions, the implementation for this methodology is simple and robust, and most importantly, solely requires a single SST image. For the present demonstration, altimetric measurements are used to infer a necessary adjustment to match the kinetic energy level for length scales smaller than 300 km. This helps to derive a regional effective Brunt-Väisälä frequency to produce SQG surface current estimates. As demonstrated, the results are very encouraging and strongly invite to consider the systematic use of satellite microwave radiometer measurements. Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union.