Speaker: Nicholas Lederer, Applied Physics Lab
Title:
Time: 2:30 PM, Thursday, 4/26/07
Abstract:
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery shows the location of high amplitude internal waves in the ocean by looking at their effect on the surface roughness. Our efforts are on using models of ocean surface wave spectrum and SAR backscatter to predict what effect certain internal wave parameters have on SAR imagery. Eventually, one may be able to use satellite SAR imagery to accurately determine local surface conditions in the atmosphere and in the upper boundary layer of the ocean.
I will be discussing my efforts in modeling wind and internal wave forcing on the sea surface wave spectrum. Internal waves can be characterized by their change in the surface velocity, which in turn affects the surface waves generated by the wind. I will show lots of pretty pictures and a couple of pretty movies that demonstrate what we believe to be a fairly decent first approximation to the effects of an internal wave passing through a patch of ocean. We use the sar_iw software package developed here at APL-UW by Brad Bell and Nicholas Lederer. This package is available freely under the GPL and runs in MATLAB or Octave. https://svn.apl.washington.edu/packages/sar_iw/sar_iw.htm
Everyone welcome!