Thursday 25 August 2005

P7
0830-1020 hours

338
Global survey of oceanic fronts
Belkin, Igor¹, Cornillon, Peter¹, Ullman, David¹
1 University Of Rhode Island, RI, USA
Author email: ibelkin@gso.uri.edu
Global coverage satellite SST and color data allowed exploration of the World Ocean fronts over a variety of spatial and temporal scales. The Cayula-Cornillon front detection and cloud masking algorithms developed at the University of Rhode Island are applied to AVHRR SST imagery from NOAA satellites obtained from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and available twice daily from January 1985 on. Color imagery from CZCS, SeaWiFS and MODIS is combined with frontal SST data. Objectively derived synoptic (instant) fronts are analyzed for each of 50+ areas that together cover the entire World Ocean. The most robust, seasonally persistent fronts are located in coastal and marginal seas, especially along the shelf break and upper slope where they are apparently controlled by topography. Owing to thermal and color contrasts, all types of surface-intensified fronts are observed from space, including fronts generated by water mass convergence, tidal mixing, wind-induced and topographic upwelling, estuarine outflows, and marginal ice zone processes. Numerous fronts are observed in the Atlantic Ocean (Nordic Seas, Subarctic Gyre, North, Baltic, Black, Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas; Bay of Biscay, Celtic Seas, Gulf of Maine, Mid- and South Atlantic Bights, Gulf of Mexico and Patagonian Shelf); Indian Ocean (Red, Arabian and Andaman Seas, Gulf of Aden, Bay of Bengal, Gulf of Carpentaria and Great Australian Bight); and Pacific Ocean (Gulf of Alaska, Bering, Okhotsk, Japan/East, Eastern and South China Seas; California Current System, Coral and Tasman Seas, and the Great Barrier Reef). Fronts are found in summer in ice-free zones (Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas; and Bransfield Strait in Antarctica). New fronts are distinguished, and important features of previously known fronts are elucidated. This study was funded largely by NASA and also by NOAA, whose support is gratefully acknowledged.

Return to Oral Presentations