Airborne Remote Sensing of the Upper Ocean Turbulence during CASPER-East

Authors
Savelyev, Ivan
Miller, William David
Sletten, Mark
Smith, Geoffrey B.
Savidge, Dana K.
Frick, Glendon
Menk, Steven
Moore, Trent
de Paolo, Tony
Terrill, Eric J.
Subjects
airborne remote sensing
ocean surface currents
upper ocean turbulence
Advisors
Date of Issue
2018
Date
Publisher
MDPI
Language
Abstract
This study takes on the challenge of resolving upper ocean surface currents with a suite of airborne remote sensing methodologies, simultaneously imaging the ocean surface in visible, infrared, and microwave bands. A series of flights were conducted over an air-sea interaction supersite established 63 km offshore by a large multi-platform CASPER-East experiment. The supersite was equipped with a range of in situ instruments resolving air-sea interface and underwater properties, of which a bottom-mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler was used extensively in this paper for the purposes of airborne current retrieval validation and interpretation. A series of water-tracing dye releases took place in coordination with aircraft overpasses, enabling dye plume velocimetry over 100 m to 10 km spatial scales. Similar scales were resolved by a Multichannel Synthetic Aperture Radar, which resolved a swath of instantaneous surface velocities (wave and current) with 10 m resolution and 5 cm/s accuracy. Details of the skin temperature variability imprinted by the upper ocean turbulence were revealed in 1–14,000 m range of spatial scales by a mid-wave infrared camera. Combined, these methodologies provide a unique insight into the complex spatial structure of the upper ocean turbulence on a previously under-resolved range of spatial scales from meters to kilometers. However, much attention in this paper is dedicated to quantifying and understanding uncertainties and ambiguities associated with these remote sensing methodologies, especially regarding the smallest resolvable turbulent scales and to reference depths of retrieved currents.
Type
Article
Description
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs10081224
Series/Report No
Department
Meteorology
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
NRL
ONR
NSF
Funder
NRL program element 61153N WUs BE023-01-41-1C04
NRL program element 61153N WUs BE023-01-41-1C02
NRL program element 61153N WUs BE023-01-41-6692
ONR grant N0001418WX01087
NSF grant OCE-1540648
Format
Citation
Savelyev, Ivan, et al. "Airborne Remote Sensing of the Upper Ocean Turbulence during CASPER-East." Remote Sensing 10.8 (2018): 1224.
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.