ISSN 2070-7401 (Print), ISSN 2411-0280 (Online)
Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa
CURRENT PROBLEMS IN REMOTE SENSING OF THE EARTH FROM SPACE

  

Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa, 2020, Vol. 17, No. 6, pp. 93-96

Retrieval of surface currents from sequential satellite radar images

O.A. Danilicheva 1 , S.A. Ermakov 1 , I.A. Kapustin 1 
1 Institute of Applied Physics RAS, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Accepted: 15.09.2020
DOI: 10.21046/2070-7401-2020-17-6-93-96
Determination of characteristics of marine currents using satellite remote sensing data is a rather complicated problem that has not been completely solved yet. Synthetic aperture radars (SAR) are often used to estimate the velocities of surface currents. The “filamentary” structures associated with biogenic marine films (slicks), which are often observed on the water surface at low-to-moderate wind conditions, can be potentially used as tracers to determine the surface current velocities. In this paper, an attempt is made to characterize marine currents using pairs of sequential images obtained with Envisat ASAR and ERS-2 SAR. The Maximum Cross-Correlation technique has been used to retrieve the surface current field. It is obtained that for some slick structures the retrieved surface velocities are directed nearly along the “filaments”, so the latter can be considered as markers of the current streamlines. However, for other slicks, the velocities are directed at rather large angles to the tangents of the “filamentary” structures, so the “filaments” differ from the current streamlines. Supposedly, this is because the currents may not be steady and marine slicks cannot change their orientation and shape instantly following fast changes of environmental conditions, in particular, to variations of wind speed/direction.
Keywords: film slicks, slick structures, surface currents, sequential satellite images, SAR
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