SAR-Related Stress Variability in the Marine Atmospheric Boundry Layer
Abstract
Satellite- or aircraft-bourne synthetic aperture radars (SAR) have the potential to serve as a powerful and essential part of the global meteorological/oceanographic observation system. While the potential of SAR systems is enormous, quantitative interpretation of SAR signals has clearly been frustrated by our incomplete understanding of the relationships between the radar backscatter cross section and a complicated heterogeneous and constantly changing state of the sea surface. In the first phase of our High-Res ARI work summarized here, we began developing two new marine atmosphere boundary layer models of the surface stress caused by submesoscale boundary layer coherent structures and we finished obtaining plainview patterns of surface stress variability caused by MABL updrafts and downdrafts. We began turning our attention to such mesoscale atmospheric circulations as the solenoidal circulation over the sea surface temperature front, the coastal sea breeze circulation, and the flow between the Bermuda High and the diurnally varying pressure through on the coastal plain. In this report, we briefly review our progress on the work that will be continued and extended during the second phase of the project from October 1, 1992 to September 30, 1995. In Appendix A and Appendix B we give two manuscripts of journal articles summarizing our results. The first one by Sikora and Young (1993) discusses the plainview patterns of surface stress variability. The second one by Wells et al. (1993) discusses a new method for estimating the correlation dimension of boundary layer turbulent time series.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA261129
Entities
People
- George S. Young
- Hampton N. Shier
Organizations
- Pennsylvania State University