Climate Applications of ATSR Data

Abstract

The ATSR instruments have now been supplying sea surface temperature (SST) measurements for over five years and several applications of the data in climate research are under development. The basic product from the ATSR instruments is the global averaged SST fields based on a half degree latitude-longitude grid. Time series analyses of the accurate ATSR data are providing detailed information on large scale ocean dynamics and, when combined with parameters provided by other ERS instruments (SCATT and ALT), they give a new insight into the dynamics of climate variability. An example will be presented which shows the links between SST, surface wind and ocean surface height in the Indian Ocean during an El Nino cycle. High spatial resolution data are also useful in climate research by providing accurate detailed information on air-sea interaction at the ocean surface. High resolution ATSR data are also being used to validate long term (thousands of years) measurements of SST using coral cores. Over homogeneous land surfaces ATSR measurements have been combined with ground-based data to develop techniques for applying satellite data in regional and global climate models. Water vapour is the most variable and radiatively important atmospheric constituent, but it is also the most difficult to measure on a global scale. Techniques are now being developed to enable the monitoring of the vertical and horizontal distribution of water vapour over the global oceans using ATSR data.

Keywords: sea surface temperature, ATSR, climate, water vapour

Keywords: ESA European Space Agency - Agence spatiale europeenne, observation de la terre, earth observation, satellite remote sensing, teledetection, geophysique, altimetrie, radar, chimique atmospherique, geophysics, altimetry, radar, atmospheric chemistry