Advanced remote sensing capabilities provide unprecedented opportunities for monitoring, studying, and forecasting the ocean environment. An integrated approach of synthesizing remote sensing data with in situ measurements and ocean models is highly desirable, both for physical and biological oceanography, polar oceanography and for marine gravity and geodesy on the regional, basin and global scales. This session provides a forum for interdisciplinary discussions of the latest advances in all aspects of oceanographic applications of remote sensing.

We welcome contributions on all aspects of the remote sensing of the ocean. Topics for this session include but are not limited to: physical oceanographic variability and interactions with the atmosphere; biological variability and the carbon cycle; marine gravity and space geodesy, and new instrument and techniques in ocean remote sensing. Studies that address the development of new instrumentation and satellite missions to provide new observations of the ocean are of special interest. Emerging instrument concepts aimed at high-resolution two-dimensional mapping of ocean surface topography and/or ocean current vectors are particularly encouraged. Studies focussed on the development and exploitation of measurements from SAR altimetry over the open, coastal and polar ocean are also of special interest.

There will be as well a sub-session on ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. SMOS is routinely providing soil moisture and ocean salinity data to scientific users. Due to the sensitivity of brightness temperature to sea surface temperature and roughness, retrieving ocean salinity from SMOS observed brightness temperatures is a challenging task. The required accuracy calls for an excellent stability of the SMOS on-board radiometer MIRAS and high quality level 1 data, in addition to temporal and spatial averaging. This session will provide an update on the status and improvements of the SMOS Level 2 ocean salinity data retrievals and of algorithms for higher salinity products.


Invited speakers:
Lee-Lueng Fu (JPL, USA): Observing the oceanic mesoscale processes with satellite altimetry: the state of the art and outlook
Katharine Giles (CPOM - UCL, UK): CryoSat2: Observing the Arctic