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Remote Sensing of Ocean Surface Currents: Measurement, Validation and Applications

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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Ocean Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 May 2024 | Viewed by 3258

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jun Myoung Choi

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Guest Editor

Department of Ocean Engineering, Pukyoung National University, Busan, Republic of Korea
Interests: multi-scale oceanic flows; coastal structures and waves; contaminant dispersion; turbulence; physical processes in inland and coastal waters

Prof. Dr. Mark Bourassa

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, EOAS Building 1011 Academic Way, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
Interests: remote sensing of the surface and boundary layer; boundary layers (ocean and atmosphere); air–sea interaction; the observing system
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Ocean surface currents play a pivotal role in Earth's climate system and marine ecosystems, as well as in human activities. The accurate monitoring and understanding of surface currents are essential for a wide range of applications, including weather forecasting, coastal management, shipping, and search and rescue operations. Remote sensing technologies offer unique capabilities for observing ocean surface currents, ranging from the submesoscale to mesoscale, and provide critical information on the underlying processes involved in air–sea interactions.

This Special Issue invites contributions that explore the latest advances, challenges and applications in the remote sensing of ocean surface currents. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the development and improvement of remote sensing techniques such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), scatterometry, altimetry, and optical remote sensing, as well as emerging observational platforms, including autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), gliders, and other in situ measurement systems. Submissions addressing air–sea interactions and upper ocean dynamic measurements using these platforms are particularly encouraged. Furthermore, we welcome studies focusing on the validation and uncertainty assessment of remote sensing-derived surface current data using various validation techniques such as drifters, moored buoys, and other in situ observations. Contributions may address the challenges associated with spatial and temporal resolution, accuracy, data coverage, and the impact of environmental factors on accuracy and detection.

This Special Issue aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders from diverse fields to share their knowledge, insights, and experiences, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and promoting the advancement of remote sensing techniques for the study and management of ocean surface currents.

Dr. Jun Myoung Choi
Prof. Dr. Mark Bourassa
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

ocean surface current
remote sensing
altimetry
scatterometry
optical remote sensing
synthetic aperture radar
autonomous underwater vehicles
air–sea interactions
data validation

Published Papers (3 papers)

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23 pages, 10525 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Ocean Satellite Data Fusion for High-Resolution Surface Current Maps

by Alisa Kugusheva, Hannah Bull, Evangelos Moschos, Artemis Ioannou, Briac Le Vu and Alexandre Stegner

Remote Sens. 2024, 16(7), 1182; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16071182 - 28 Mar 2024

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Abstract

Real-time reconstruction of ocean surface currents is a challenge due to the complex, non-linear dynamics of the ocean, the small number of in situ measurements, and the spatio-temporal heterogeneity of satellite altimetry observations. To address this challenge, we introduce HIRES-CURRENTS-Net, an operational real-time convolutional neural network (CNN) model for daily ocean current reconstruction. This study focuses on the Mediterranean Sea, a region where operational models have great difficulty predicting surface currents. Notably, our model showcases higher accuracy compared to commonly used alternative methods. HIRES-CURRENTS-Net integrates high-resolution measurements from the infrared or visible spectrum—high resolution Sea Surface Temperature (SST) or chlorophyll (CHL) images—in addition to the low-resolution Sea Surface Height (SSH) maps derived from satellite altimeters. In the first stage, we apply a transfer learning method which uses a high-resolution numerical model to pre-train our CNN model on simulated SSH and SST data with synthetic clouds. The observation of System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) offers us a sufficient training dataset with reference surface currents at very high resolution, and a model trained on this data can then be applied to real data. In the second stage, to enhance the real-time operational performance of our model over previous methods, we fine-tune the CNN model on real satellite data using a novel pseudo-labeling strategy. We validate HIRES-CURRENTS-Net on real data from drifters and demonstrate that our data-driven approach proves effective for real-time sea surface current reconstruction with potential operational applications such as ship routing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Ocean Surface Currents: Measurement, Validation and Applications)

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15 pages, 2944 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Increasing the Observability of Near Inertial Oscillations by a Future ODYSEA Satellite Mission

by Jinbo Wang, Hector Torres, Patrice Klein, Alexander Wineteer, Hong Zhang, Dimitris Menemenlis, Clement Ubelmann and Ernesto Rodriguez

Remote Sens. 2023, 15(18), 4526; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15184526 - 14 Sep 2023

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Abstract

Near Inertial Oscillations (NIOs) are ocean oscillations forced by intermittent winds. They are most energetic at mid-latitudes, particularly in regions with atmospheric storm tracks. Wind-driven, large-scale NIOs are quickly scattered by ocean mesoscale eddies (with sizes ranging from 100 to 400 km), causing a significant portion of the NIO energy to propagate into the subsurface ocean interior. This kinetic energy pathway illustrates that the wind energy input to NIO is critical for maintaining deep ocean stratification and thus closing the total energy budget, as emphasised by numerous modelling studies. However, this wind energy input to NIO remains poorly observed on a global scale. A remote sensing approach that observes winds and ocean currents co-located in time and space with high resolution is necessary to capture the intermittent air-sea coupling. The current satellite observations do not meet these requirements. This study assesses the potential of a new satellite mission concept, Ocean DYnamics and Surface Exchange with the Atmosphere (OSYSEA), to recover wind-forced NIOs from co-located winds and currents. To do this, we use an Observation System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) based on hourly observations of ocean surface currents and surface winds from five surface moorings covering latitudes from

15^{°}

50^{°}

. ODYSEA wind and current observations are expected to have a spatial resolution of 10 km with about a 12 h sampling frequency in mid-latitudes. Results show that NIOs can be recovered with high accuracy using the ODYSEA spatial and temporal resolution, but only if observations are made over a wide area of 1800 km. A narrower swath (1000 km) may lead to significant aliasing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Ocean Surface Currents: Measurement, Validation and Applications)

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15 pages, 3826 KiB

Open AccessTechnical Note

Asymmetric Drifter Trajectories in an Anticyclonic Mesoscale Eddy

by Pengfei Tuo, Zhiyuan Hu, Shengli Chen, Jianyu Hu and Peining Yu

Remote Sens. 2023, 15(15), 3806; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15153806 - 31 Jul 2023

Viewed by 1020

Abstract

The influences of sea surface wind on the oceanic mesoscale eddy are complex. By integrating our self-developed surface drifters with satellite observations, we examined the influence of sea surface wind on the distribution of water masses and biomass within the interior of an anticyclonic eddy. Ten drifters were deployed in the northern South China Sea in the spring of 2021. Eventually, six were trapped in an anticyclonic mesoscale eddy for an extended period. Interestingly, the drifters’ trajectories were not symmetric around the eddy center, displaying a significant offset of the distance from the wind turns to the southerly wind. Particle tracking experiments demonstrated that this departure could mainly be attributed to wind-driven ageostrophic currents. This is due to the strength of wind-driven ageostrophic currents being more comparable to geostrophic currents when accompanied by a deflection between the directions of the wind-driven current and the eddy’s translation. The drifters’ derived data indicated that sub-mesoscale ageostrophic currents within the eddy contributed to this asymmetric trajectory, with Ekman and non-Ekman components playing a role. Furthermore, the evolution of ocean color data provided corroborating evidence of these dynamic processes, highlighting the importance of ageostrophic processes within mesoscale eddies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Ocean Surface Currents: Measurement, Validation and Applications)

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