Abstract
It is known that films on the sea surface can appear due to ship pollution, river and collector drains, as well as natural biological processes. Marine film slicks can indicate various geophysical processes in the upper layer of the ocean and in the atmosphere. In particular, slick signatures in SAR-imagery of the sea surface at low and moderate wind speeds are often associated with marine currents. Apart from the current itself, other factors such as wind and the physical characteristics of films can significantly influence the dynamics of slick structures. In this paper, a prospective approach aimed at measuring surface currents is developed. The approach is based on the investigation of the geometry of artificial banded slicks formed under the action of marine currents and on the retrieval of the current characteristics from this geometry. The developed approach is applied to quasi stationary slick bands under conditions when the influence of the film spreading effects can be neglected. For the stationary part of the slick band where transition processes of the band formation, e.g., methods of application of surfactants on water, film spreading processes, possible wind transformation etc., become negligible, some empirical relations between the band geometrical characteristics and the characteristics of the surface currents are obtained. The advantage of the approach is a possibility of getting information concerning the spatial structure of marine currents along the entire slick band. The suggested approach can be efficient for remote sensing data verification.
Highlights
It is well known that films on the sea surface can indicate the presence of various geophysical processes in the upper ocean layer and in the atmosphere, for example, internal waves, fronts, convective atmospheric cells, etc. [1,2,3,4,5]
Banded slick structures that appear in SAR images of the sea surface at low and moderate wind speeds are often associated with marine currents
The results obtained in this paper indicate that the contribution of wind to the slick band propagation should be taken into account
Summary
It is well known that films on the sea surface can indicate the presence of various geophysical processes in the upper ocean layer and in the atmosphere, for example, internal waves, fronts, convective atmospheric cells, etc. [1,2,3,4,5]. Banded slick structures that appear in SAR images of the sea surface at low and moderate wind speeds are often associated with marine currents. It is ‘a priori’ considered that slick bands mark fine structure of currents/eddies, manifested as “filaments” in sea surface imagery [6,7]. Slick structures can indicate the dynamics of near surface processes, since surfactants can accumulate, for example, in the areas of current convergence zones [8,9,10,11] or can appear in shear stream currents [12]. Slick dynamics strongly depend on the viscoelastic characteristics of surfactants, whose chemical composition and concentration are in general unknown
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