SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING OF SEA-ICE AND SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE

Sea-ice and Sea Surface Temperature in offshore seas are important terms for operational monitoring and forecasting marine environment in China. The software system of regional marine environmental application designed by author is used for realtime operational monitoring sea-ice, SST, oceanic current and colours and characters of land surface. This software system processes quantitative AVHRR data from NOAA satellite to calculate calibration coefficient, solar angle correction, earth location parameter and atmospheric attenuation correction, then SST field will be produced through calculation using special SST model, and top-quality of colour composite imagery of satellite with variable spacial resolution (1, 2 or 5km) will be produced via image processing. Inside front covor Figure 1 is colour enhanced imagery with 5km resolution of NOAA satellite in offshore

Structure and seasonal variability of fronts in the Southeast Indian Ocean along sections from Fremantle, Australia to Antarctic Zhongshan Station

Four sections of expendable conductivity-temperature-depth （XCTD） profiles from Fremantle, Australia to Antarctic Zhongshan Station and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer-Aquarius （MODIS-A） sea surface temperature （SST） products were used to study the structure and seasonal variability of Southeast Indian Ocean fronts. Water mass analysis showed that surface water masses in the Southeast Indian Ocean were less salty in March than in November. Compared with November, the subtropical front （STF） moved southward about one degree of latitude in March, whereas seasonal variability of the subantarctic front （SAF） and polar front （PF） locations was not obvious. In March, the saline front moved northward about two degrees of latitude relative to the thermal front in the upper 100 m at the SAF, which was the northern boundary of sub- Antarctic surface water （SASW）. Analysis of climatological SST gradients from the satellite data showed that regions of enhanced sea surface temperature （SST） gradients were collocated with frontal locations identified with the XCTD data using water mass criteria. The surface expression of the PF identified by the SST gradient was further south by about one degree of latitude relative to the subsurface expression of the PF identified by the northern boundary of cold water.

Assessing the potential for satellite image monitoring of seagrass thermal dynamics:for inter-and shallow sub-tidal seagrasses in the inshore Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area,Australia

Seagrass meadows are at increasing risk of thermal stress and recent work has shown that water temperature around seagrass meadows could be used as an indicator for seagrass condition.Satellite thermal data have not been linked to the thermal properties of seagrass meadows.This work assessed the covariation between 20 in situ average daily temperature logger measurement sites in tropical seagrass meadows and satellite derived daytime SST(sea surface temperature)from the daytime MODIS and Landsat sensors along the Great Barrier Reef coast in Australia.Statistically significant(R2=0.787–0.939)positive covariations were found between in situ seagrass logger temperatures and MODIS SST temperature and Landsat sensor temperatures at all sites along the reef.The MODIS SST were consistently higher than in situ temperature at the majority of the sites,possibly due to the sensor’s larger pixel size and location offset from field sites.Landsat thermal data were lower than field-measured SST,due to differences in measurement scales and times.When refined significantly and tested over larger areas,this approach could be used to monitor seagrass health over large(106 km2)areas in a similar manner to using satellite SST for predicting thermal stress for corals.