Estimation of Arctic Ocean Surface Currents Under Ice from Satellite Data
Abstract
Ocean surface currents are usually inferred from sea surface height which is inferred using satellite altimetry data. The Arctic is mainly covered by sea ice and it is therefore not possible to estimate currents from altimetry. Sea ice motion is driven by wind and currents. One idea is to obtain surface currents that represent the part of the ice motion which is not affected by the local and instantaneous changes of the wind. This approach has been tested with low resolution sea ice drift maps inferred from radiometer data, available 5 months a year, this enabled to infer a mean current map over 7 winters. We applied this approach with an enhanced sea ice drift dataset, based on the merging of satellite data (scatterometer and radiometer sensor data) available 9 months a year, and wind fields from model. This method enables to obtain sea surface currents on a seasonal scale, which can be used to deduce information on variability of the surface currents. We will present the method and show some results of sea surface currents, compared with surface currents from model data.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFM.C51A0491G
- Keywords:
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- 0750 CRYOSPHERE Sea ice;
- 0758 CRYOSPHERE Remote sensing;
- 4262 OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL Ocean observing systems