Abstract
Coastal tidal effects on thermal plumes are investigated, exploiting remote sensing of two major coastal industrial installations. The installations use sea water as a coolant, which is then released back into coastal environments at a higher-than-ambient temperature, allowing the plume to be delineated from the ambient waters. Satellite-based thermal sensors observing the Earth at spatial resolutions of 90 and 100 m are used. It is possible to identify coastal features and thermal spatial distributions. This paper presents coastal tidal effects on detected plumes for two case studies: an intertidal embayment and open water exposure, both on the coast of the UK. We correlated the behaviours of thermal plumes using remotely sensed high resolution thermal imagery with tidal phases derived from tide gauges. The results show very distinct behaviours for the flood and ebb tides. The detected surface plume location was dependent on flow switching direction for the different types of tide. The detected surface area was dependent on the strength of the currents, with the largest area observed during the strongest currents. Understanding the dispersion of the plume is essential to influence understanding of any potential ecological impacts.
Highlights
Coastal zones are sensitive ecosystems providing valuable habitats for varied flora and fauna, as well as economic benefits including tourism and leisure
This paper focuses on the extent to which remote sensing imagery can reveal the impact of tides on thermal plume dispersion
Our region of interest (ROI) is centred next to Heysham Sands and surrounded by tidal flats formed by mud or wet sand deposited by tides
Summary
Coastal zones are sensitive ecosystems providing valuable habitats for varied flora and fauna, as well as economic benefits including tourism and leisure. Coastal regions remain challenging areas for Earth observation due to dynamic land–water boundaries and enhanced variability in shallow water regions. Numerous studies have used different modelling techniques in order to understand coastal dynamics [4,5,6,7,8]. In addition to the models, the use of high-resolution remote sensing data can contribute to better understanding of the coastal zone [9,10,11,12]. Despite the temporal trade-off associated with the satellite repeat-time coverage, remote sensing information has the advantage of high spatial resolution observations
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