The general objective of proposed project is to investigate synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signatures of sub- and meso-scale oceanic dynamic phenomena (IWs, meso-scale currents and fronts) in the Norwegian and Barents Seas with use of Envisat ASAR imagery , supplementary satellite data and ocean model output, and to analyze this data set with use of the RIModel.
It is planned to run joint NIERSC (Saint-Petersburg)/NERSC (Bergen) experiments on investigation of SAR oceanic meso-scale dynamics signatures fro m NERSC archives, supplementing them with high resolution Barents Sea model output with use of the advanced RIModel developed in NIERSC (Saint-Petersburg). The proposed project consists of three main parts:
1. Investigation of IWs in the Barents Sea usin g NERSC SAR datasets and the RIModel.
2. Investigation of SAR signatures of sub- and meso-scale ocean surface currents and development of an algorithm for retrieval their quantitative characteristics from SAR.
3. Development of synergetic multi-sensor app roach for retrieval of meso-scale ocean current parameters from the satellite data.
It is assumed to implement obtained results (on oceanic meso-scale dynamic investigation) for operational meso-scale phenomena characteristics retrieval (all-wind-conditio n current velocity and strength retrieval, IWs propagation velocity, direction, depth and thus pycnocline depth) from SAR data processing and analyzing at NERSC.