Estimating ocean surface currents from remotely sensed observations
A/Prof. Nicole Jones1, Mr Rick de Kreij1, Dr Matthew Rayson1, Dr Paul Branson2, Mr Murray Burling3, Mr Greg Bush2, Associate Professor Jeff Hansen1, Dr Rodrigo Garcia1, Dr Shane Keating4, Dr Andrew Zammit Mangion5, Dr Jen-Ping Peng1, Dr Callum Shakespeare6
1University Of Western Australia, Crawley , Australia, 2CSIRO, Crawley, Australia, 3RPS, Perth, Australia, 4University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 5University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia, 6Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Australia has a thriving marine and offshore industry and oversees one of the largest sea search and rescue zones globally. Surface currents in the ocean have a considerable impact on many marine operations and activities, ranging from side-by-side offloading, forces on moored platforms, and drift trajectories of search and rescue targets. Yet, despite their importance, no current methodology exists that can reliably provide measurements of surface currents across the range of spatial and temporal scales relevant to industry and marine safety. Here we will describe two approaches we are developing to infer fine-scale (1-100 km) ocean surface currents from remotely sensed ocean observations. First, we will describe a method developed to statistically invert high-resolution sea surface temperature satellite observations. Second, we will describe a method to infer sea surface currents from images of the ocean surface that capture the surface wave-induced reflectance (e.g., from Sentinel-2B). Last, we will introduce our efforts to advance ocean surface current estimation using the soon to be launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, which will measure swaths of surface altimetry for the first time.
Biography:
Associate Professor Nicole Jones is a Physical Oceanographer at the University of Western Australia. She uses a combination of field observations and numerical modelling to study primarily relatively small-scale ocean dynamics, including turbulent mixing, internal waves and ocean eddies. Understanding these processes is vital to quantify the transport of heat, pollutants and nutrients around the ocean. Nicole has extensive fieldwork and cruise experience and a particular interest in the development of novel field-observation techniques.
Nicole represents the Western Australian marine science community by leading the Western Australia node of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS).
