Distribution of Internal Waves in the Northeast Atlantic: An Ocean ColorRemote Sensing Analysis

Internal waves are large-scale dynamics within the water column, where they have a significant impact on several processes: vertical displacement of water properties, sediments, and primary production. This study aims to record their spatio-temporal distribution in the Northeast Atlantic region using optical remote sensing techniques. It's also assessed if the Sentinel-3 platform employed in the study as an ocean color sensor benchmark is reliable with analogous results provided by SARs. Results show that the majority of internal waves were found in the Iberian Coast and the Azores Archipelago, in areas with peculiar bathymetry. At the same time, a seasonal pattern seemed to concentrate these occurrences between April and September where the sunglint impacts on data were more noticeable. This suggests that an effect that was previously considered undesirable in this type of data can actually be useful for observing internal waves on the ocean surface.