MEASUREMENT OF TURBULENCE IN THE OCEANIC MIXED LAYER USING SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR (SAR)

摘要

Improved understanding of the cause and character of turbulence is increasingly important for applications such as climate change: Turbulent processes near the surface layer of the ocean contribute greatly to momentum, heat and flux transfers across the air-sea boundary. Such processes are most commonly observed in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery as the turbulent wake present behind a moving surface vessel or ship, but also in the radar backscatter signatures of breaking surface & internal waves, convection, eddies, etc. Fine-resolution turbulent wake flows were computed numerically using Direct Numerical Simulation and the interaction of small-scale wake turbulence with the free surface studied using a hydrodynamic interaction model. The resulting modulated surface currents were subsequently processed through radar simulation algorithms to generate simulated radar images of the wake and demonstrating the ability of SAR to observe and characterise surface turbulent flows which contribute to exchange processes at the air-sea interface.