Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa, 2010, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 248-259
Small-scale eddies in the Black Sea
A.G. Kostianoy
1, A.I. Ginzburg
1, N.A. Sheremet
1, O.Yu. Lavrova
2, M.I. Mityagina
21 P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 36, Nakhimovsky Pr., Moscow, 117997, Russia
2 Russian Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 84/32, Profsoyuznaya Str., Moscow, 117997, Russia
Despite increased attention to the study of vortical processes and dynamics in the ocean, the most known, studied and described are meso-scale eddies with the size of 30-100 km. A huge number of factors and a variety of conditions in the real ocean determine an inevitable fragmentation of information about the processes of formation, development and dynamics of small-scale eddies (smaller than Rossby radius of deformation). Systematic research addressing this problem, so far has not been conducted, mainly for technical reasons. Small-scale eddies are very hard to investigate by traditional methods and techniques because of their small size, unsteadiness, spontaneity of their appearance and a short lifetime. During the satellite monitoring of the sea surface, conducted in the coastal zones of the Black, Caspian and Baltic Seas during the last 10 years, on radar and optical images of the sea surface obtained with high spatial resolution (2.5-25-75 m), we observed a large number of vortices of small size with diameters ranging from hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers. Examples of small-scale eddies observations in the Black Sea coastal zone are shown and reasons for their generation are discussed.
Keywords: the Black Sea, small-scale eddies, satellite radar imagery, satellite high resolution optical imagery, sea surface
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