Radiative Sensing of Sea Surface Temperature

Abstract

The technique of inferring sea surface temperatures from radiation observed in the infrared region of the spectrum has been used extensively for more than a decade. Remote sensing has successfully been employed from airplanes, notably in upwelling studies of the Pacific Ocean off the Oregon coast (Holladay and O’Brien, 1975) where the sea surface temperatures revealed the response of the ocean to varying wind stress conditions. Numerous studies have employed such data to study eddies of the Gulf Stream. The time scale of the feature of interest is in many of these cases days or weeks, which is too short for an adequate survey by a ship. The ability of airplanes or satellites to survey a large area in a short period of time and to repeat the measurements within a short time interval has revealed mesoscale circulation features in the ocean not imagined previously. The new technique has provided much informaton, and also posed new questions related to it. Operational uses of satellite data for weather forecasting have been particularly valuable over the oceans. Sea surface temperatures may be used increasingly as indicators of long range weather changes (e.g., Bjerknes, 1969; Namias, 1969).