2013 Images of the Month

  • Dec. 2013: Mediterranean tides on the move

    Tides are also measured and predicted in the Mediterranean Sea, with a better and better precision thanks to altimetry.

  • Nov. 2013: Typhoon Haiyan seen by Saral

    Typhoon Haiyan is one of the most powerful typhoon devastating the Philippines. It reached the coast on November 7. Saral/AltiKa overflew the typhoon on pass 821 on November 7 21:30 UTC.

  • Oct. 2013: Salt and temperature vs altimetry

    Ocean surface heights measured by altimetry reflect the density of the waters, which is a matter of salinity and temperature.Using SMOS satellite surface salinity and SST, a surface density can be computed, and compared with altimetry sea surface heights.

  • Sep. 2013: Icebergs on the move

    Having twenty years of altimetry enables to compute statistics on icebergs including a climatology of icebergs shed by the Antarctic continent.

  • Aug. 2013: 20 years of typhoons

    Tropical cyclones are known to be intensified by the heat of the upper ocean. Sea surface heights from altimetry enable to have an insight on e subsurface warm layer thickness and upper ocean heat content and their variations over the last two decades.

  • Jul. 2013: Ob bogs and wetlands

    Saral is giving very promising results, especially for wetlands and more generally inland waters. The measurements over the Ob basin area are providing with a mean to discriminate between water, ice and dry lands.

  • Jun. 2013: Is the ground rising or the sea decreasing?

    Tide gauges are used to monitor sea level. However, they are anchored on lands, and thus monitor as much the land vertical motions than the sea's. When tide gauges and Doris stations are close by, combining their measurements enables to decide if it is the land or the sea which varies.

  • May 2013: Drifting buoy

    The Acciona sailing boat capsized on February 3 at the end of last Vendée Globe alone-the-world sailing race. One of the onboard Argos beacons got loose and switched on. It has been followed ever since by the Argonautica educational project.

  • Apr. 2013: Surface currents, a pinch of winds with altimetry

    Mixing geostrophic currents and scatterometers-derived ones, one can obtain more realistics and useful currents to explain, e.g. surface drifters trajectories, but also biology including cholorophyll concentration in the ocean.

  • Mar. 2013: Saral: 6 days old, and already measuring

    The Saral satellite was launched on February 25, 2013. A little more than one week after its launch, the data looks very promising. Next is the continuation of measurement analysis, validation of ground processing software and a calibration/validation phase with the PIs.

  • Feb. 2013: Alboran Sea eddies

    Alboran Sea is at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea. Atlantic waters enters the Mediterranean turbulently, leading to a pair of eddies with varying intensity that show as well in altimetry as in other kind of ocean observation from space.

  • Jan. 2013: Salinity gets finer with altimetry

    SMOS satellite (ESA) sea surface salinity were merged with surface geostrophic velocities from altimetry, to identify the best area for an oceanographic field campaign.