Satellite Oceanography

Pierre Flament, Department of Oceanography, University of Hawaii

This class is listed as 663 "Satellite Oceanography" in the catalog; it
counts towards the requirements of the Oceanography Department. Students
should register for three credits.

The full pdf text of the proposal that led to this course can be
found here.

The class consists of two parts: an overview of remote sensing techniques
in oceanography, and a small research project based on a satellite data
set of your choice.

Four principal subdisciplines of remote sensing may be covered in the
first part, depending on the individual interests of students:

	(a) infrared and microwave radiometers (surface temperature)
	(b) visible radiometers (ocean color, chlorophyll)
	(c) altimeters (surface topography)
	(d) synthetic aperture radars (SAR) and scatterometers

Since there are 15 weeks of classes, each subdiscipline may be covered
in 4 lessons, according to the following schedule:

week 1: a short lecture on the principles of each technique, the physical
	processes involved and the different sensors and systems available

week 2,3: students read key papers from the published literature for
	each lesson and take turns to explain them to the class, to lead
	a discussion and to "wrap up" conclusions.

week 4: I give or invite a visitor to give a "case-studies" seminar on
	some research done using the technique.

For the second part, I will make available several interesting data sets.
I anticipate having on-line:

- global altimeter data set, 4 years
- series of infrared images of California, Hawaii and the Equator
- global browse ocean color data, 8 years
- several SAR images of seamounts, jets, islands
- global microwave SSMR and SSMI data
- real-time GMS and AVHRR data from the UH receiving station

The data sets will be clean and calibrated in scientific units, so that a
small research project can be completed in about 2 months. The work will
be done on SUN workstations.  A term paper summarizing the results will
be expected. Access and use of the data from the UH receiving station
will be covered.