Seasonal and interannual studies of vortices in sea surface temperature data

Q. Yang ^A1, B. Parvin ^A1, A.J. Mariano ^A2, E.H. Ryan ^A2, R. Evans ^A2, O.B. Brown ^A2

^A1 National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
^A2 RSMAS, University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149 USA

Abstract:

An algorithm for calculating feature displacement velocities and for detecting vortices has been applied to 13 years of sea surface temperature data derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data. A unique global event database for seasonal and interannual studies of the spatial distribution of oceanic vortices was created for the years 1986-1998. The results indicate that (1) the number of vortices in each season is fairly constant from year to year in each hemisphere--however, their preferred locations change on seasonal to interannual time-scales; (2) the maximum number of vortices were detected in the summer and in the winter in all oceans and the minimum number were detected in the autumn; and (3) the distribution of the spatial density function shows preferred localizations such as 40°S, the tropical instability region, marginal seas, western boundary and eastern boundary current regimes.

Reference:

Seasonal and interannual studies of vortices in SST data, Q. Yang, B. Parvin, A.J. Mariano, E.H. Ryan, R. Evans, and O.B. Brown, Int. J. of Remote Sensing, 25 (7-8), 1371-1376, 2004. Oceanography from Space Venice 2000 special issue. (doi:10.1080/01431160310001592319)

Links:
int-j-of-r-s-v25-2004.pdf