HR: 0800h
AN: OS51B-0475    [Abstracts]
TI: Reconstruction of Coastal-Scale Ocean Fields in an Upwelling Region
AU: * Zhang, Y
EM: yzhang@mbair.org
AF: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, 7700 Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, CA 95039, United States
AU: Bellingham, J G
EM: jgb@mbari.org
AF: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, 7700 Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, CA 95039, United States
AU: Davis, R
EM: rdavis@ucsd.edu
AF: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States
AU: Fratantoni, D
EM: dfratantoni@whoi.edu
AF: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 266 Woods Hole Road, Woods Hole, MA 02543, United States
AU: Ramp, S
EM: sramp@nps.edu
AF: Naval Postgraduate School, 1 University Circle, Monterey, CA 93943, United States
AB: Coastal upwelling is an ecologically important ocean process. In this presentation, we first extract the upwelling mode in Monterey Bay from satellite and aircraft sea surface temperature (SST) measurements during the AOSN II Experiment in August 2003. Then we evaluate autonomous underwater vehicles' (AUVs') capability of capturing the upwelling mode and reconstructing the ocean field. The upwelling mode features colder water at the upwelling centers at Cape Ano Nuevo and Point Sur. Its amplitude correlates well with the oceanic upwelling index (based on wind stress measurement). The upwelling mode accounts for 56% of the total variance, hence is by far the principal mode. Surface temperature measurements made by Dorado, Spray, and Slocum AUVs constituted a data set independent of the satellite & aircraft SST data set. One metric to evaluate the AUVs' survey performance is how much of the upwelling mode they captured. Using the AUVs' SST data only, we estimate the upwelling mode's amplitude. It closely tracks the upwelling mode's amplitude estimated by satellite & aircraft SST, and also correlates quite well with the upwelling index, up to August 24. For the last week in August, the correlations decrease considerably, which we think is due to the AUVs' larger distances from the upwelling centers. This study reveals the upwelling mode from SST measurements, and also provides insight to improving AUVs' surveys for capturing ocean processes.
DE: 4200 OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL
DE: 4262 Ocean observing systems
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting