An analysis of the radar backscatter from oil-covered sea surfaces using moment method and Monte-Carlo simulation: preliminary results

An analysis of the radar backscattering from the ocean surface covered by oil spill is presented using a microwave scattering model and Monte-Carlo simulation. In the analysis, a one-dimensional rough sea surface is numerically generated with an ocean waveheight spectrum for a given wind velocity. A two-layered medium is then generated by adding a thin oil layer on the simulated rough sea surface. The electric fields backscattered from the sea surface with two-layered medium are computed with the method of moments (MoM), and the backscattering coefficients are statistically obtained with N independent samples for each oil-spilled surface using the Monte-Carlo technique for various conditions of surface roughness, oil-layer thickness, frequency, polarization and incidence angle. The numerical simulation results are compared with theoretical models for clean sea surfaces and SAR images of an oil-spilled sea surface caused by the Hebei (Hebei province, China) Spirit oil tanker in 2007. Further, conditions for better oil spill extraction are sought by the numerical simulation on the effects of wind speed and oil-layer thickness at different incidence angles on the backscattering coefficients.     

Generation of high resolution sea surface temperature using multi-satellite data for operational oceanography

In the present article, we introduce a high resolution sea surface temperature(SST) product generated daily by Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology(KIOST). The SST product is comprised of four sets of data including eight-hour and daily average SST data of 1 km resolution, and is based on the four infrared(IR) satellite SST data acquired by advanced very high resolution radiometer(AVHRR), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS), Multifunctional Transport Satellites-2(MTSAT-2) Imager and Meteorological Imager(MI), two microwave radiometer SSTs acquired by Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2(AMSR2), and Wind SAT with in-situ temperature data. These input satellite and in-situ SST data are merged by using the optimal interpolation(OI) algorithm. The root-mean-square-errors(RMSEs) of satellite and in-situ data are used as a weighting value in the OI algorithm. As a pilot product, four SST data sets were generated daily from January to December 2013. In the comparison between the SSTs measured by moored buoys and the daily mean KIOST SSTs, the estimated RMSE was 0.71°C and the bias value was –0.08°C. The largest RMSE and bias were 0.86 and –0.26°C respectively, observed at a buoy site in the boundary region of warm and cold waters with increased physical variability in the Sea of Japan/East Sea. Other site near the coasts shows a lower RMSE value of 0.60°C than those at the open waters. To investigate the spatial distributions of SST, the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature(GHRSST) product was used in the comparison of temperature gradients, and it was shown that the KIOST SST product represents well the water mass structures around the Korean Peninsula. The KIOST SST product generated from both satellite and buoy data is expected to make substantial contribution to the Korea Operational Oceanographic System(KOOS) as an input parameter for data assimilation.     

Observational and numerical analysis of the characteristics of MCS development associated with trigger effect of isolated islands

In order to clarify the characteristics of Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) development and understand the impact of the trigger effect of isolated islands, observational and numerical analysis of the heavy rainfall were carried out over the southwestern part of the Korean Peninsula on July 14, 2004. Satellite based remote sensing data and numerical model MM5 with observational data adjustment were used in this study. The MCS development, in this case, was accompanied not by directional wind shear, but by speed shear which was strongly associated with development of the updraft cloud. An inversion layer at a 750 hPa level is one of the fundamental factors in increasing instability. Effective separation of the upper and lower level atmospheric structure due to an inversion layer at a 750 hPa level creates a suitable condition to develop a MCS. According to numerical analysis it has been found that isolated islands located off the southwestern part of the Korean Peninsula are not a principal factor in causing the heavy rainfall due to the evolution of MCS in this case. Transferable topographic forcing of the downwind side can often induce the variation of MCS intensity, while associated with the precipitation amount over the lee side of the isolated islands at a mature stage of MCS development.     

热带西太平洋夏季风和南海夏季风之间的联系

根据热带西太平洋（１３０°－１６０°Ｅ,１０°－２０°Ｎ）上空对流的年际变化,对表面温度、向外长波幅射、８５０ ｈＰａ纬向风进行了合成分析。合成分析结果表明,热带西太平洋上空的弱（强）对流对应着前冬和春季厄尔尼诺（拉尼娜）型的海温异常。与以前的研究结果进行了比较,说明上述海温异常的时空分布也与热带西太平洋和南海季风的爆发早晚相关联。合成分析结果还表明,热带西太平洋上空的弱（强）对流对应着从热带西太平洋向西伸展到盂加拉湾的东风（西风）异常。数值模拟也得到类似的结果。此外,在对流弱（强）的夏季,热带西太平洋上空的对流和南海低层纬向风均表现出弱（强）的季节演变特征。     

Development of the Operational Oceanographic System of Korea

Ocean Science Journal - The Korea Operational Oceanographic System (KOOS) was developed at the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST) to produce real-time forecasting and...     

Pre-Japan-ARGO: Experimental Observation of Upper and Middle Layers South of the Kuroshio Extension Region Using Profiling Floats

We deployed two profiling floats in the region south of the Kuroshio Extension in March 2000. Temperature and salinity profiles from a depth of 1500 × 10⁴ Pa to the surface are reported every two and four weeks, respectively. The floats performed very well for first four months after deployment. Later they failed in surfacing for a few months when the sea surface temperature in the region was high. The salinity sensors seemed to suffer from some damage during their failure-in-surfacing period. Despite this trouble, the results clearly demonstrate that the profiling float is a very useful and cost-effective tool for physical oceanographic observation in the open sea. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Accuracy improvement of the radar backscatter simulation from sea surface covered by oil slick using fetch-dependent waveheight spectrum: Comparison with the 2007 <Emphasis Type="Italic">Heibei Spirit</Emphasis> Case in the Yellow Sea

In this paper, results are presented on the comparison of X-band radar backscattering coefficient (RBC) from an oilcovered sea surface that features the Elfouhaily and Durden-Vesecky waveheight spectra. The Durden-Vesecky spectrum applies to a fully-developed sea, while the Elfouhaily spectrum accounts for the fetch of arbitrary length. Using these two waveheight spectra, a one-dimensional random rough surface is simulated by the Monte Carlo method, and the method of moments (MoM) is applied to yield the RBC. Comparison of the results with TerraSAR-X synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data acquired over the coastal waters polluted by the Hebei Spirit oil tanker shows that the Elfouhaily spectrum yields better agreement than the Durden-Vesecky spectrum for the fully-developed sea, and that the fetch-dependent Elfouhaily spectrum improves the agreement with SAR data in comparison with the fetch-independent spectrum for the fully developed sea. A possible application to estimate the amount of spilled oil is also suggested.     

Geometric performance evaluation of the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager

The Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) instrument acquires eight channels of multispectral images, which consist of 16 slots positioned in four lines and columns. GOCI Level 1B data, therefore, consist of a mosaic of 16 images, geometrically corrected with the Image Navigation and Registration Software Module (INRSM) system based on automatic point landmark matching for each slot and band. A study of the geometric performance characteristics of the Level 1B data was conducted over a period from August 2010 to September 2011 using residual data from Bands 7 and 8. To evaluate the geometric performance in detail, this paper examines the following four types of image navigation and registration errors: navigation performance, within-frame registration, frame-to-frame registration, and band-toband registration. In addition to the performance statistics based on mosaic images, we used a slot-based analysis method for the rainy season (here, June 2011) to understand the local distribution of the geometric performance. From the image-based results, the navigation and frame-to-frame accuracies were better than 1 pixel and the band-to-band registration accuracy was better than 0.4 pixels, while the within-frame registration accuracy was less than 1 pixel. However, for the band-to-band performance, the percentage of observations that fell within the specifications was slightly less than 99.7% for all 240 frames from June 2011. The within-frame performance was much lower than the other performance categories and the residual error for the east-west direction was higher than that for the north-south direction. The results from the slotbased performance evaluation suggest that abnormal errors (e.g. above 53 ??rad for navigation) occur in some slots, although the performance during an estimation period of 7 continuous days was within the desired criteria.