Abstract
Near-real time sea surface current information is needed for ocean operations. On a global scale, only satellites can provide such measurements. This can be done with data from infrared radiometers, available on several satellites, thus giving several images a day. This work analyses the accuracy of such an estimation of surface current fields retrieved with the maximum cross correlation (MCC) method, here used to track patterns of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) brightness temperature between 224 pairs of consecutive images taken between January and December 2015 in the western Mediterranean Sea. Comparison with in-situ drifters shows that relatively small patterns, moving at a slow speed, tracked between images separated by less than four hours give the best agreement. The agreement was strongest in summer, and consistent with low wind, non-eddying situations. When compared to a daily reanalysis field, the averaged satellite-retrieved fields showed good agreement, but not the in-situ drifter data. Drifter data should hence be used to complement satellite-retrieved currents rather than to validate them, since they may measure different components of the surface currents.
Highlights
Near-real time measurements of sea surface currents are required, for example, for oil spill or other pollution confinement [1,2] and search and rescue missions [3]
For example, Bowen et al [14] or Warren et al [11], we consider that the retrieval is accurate enough if the error (MCC - drifter) in speed is lower than 0.2 m s−1 and the error in direction lower than 45◦
We first determine which settings of the maximum cross correlation (MCC) algorithm produce the largest agreement in terms of data volume
Summary
Near-real time measurements of sea surface currents are required, for example, for oil spill or other pollution confinement [1,2] and search and rescue missions [3]. For non-geostrophic currents and/or when a higher temporal resolution is required, a common method consists of tracking the movement of patterns of ocean colour or sea surface temperature [9,10,11,12]. This is what we do in this manuscript
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