Ocean Dynamics from Laser Altimetry
We are studying topography of the oceans at a range of spatial scales using range and waveform information from
the Shuttle laser Altimeter-01 (SLA-01) instrument, flown on the Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-72) during January, 1996. Our interest is motivated by a desire to detect and characterize near-coastal mesoscale currents and eddies, which are relevant to monitoring to coastal hazards.
Research Objectives
- Assess the viability of laser altimetric data for the determination of high resolution profiles and regional grids of the sea surface, with particular focus in near shore regions where radar systems are typically unreliable.
- Recover ocean roughness from returned waveforms to correct the range data and estimate sea state (significant wave height, wind speed, and possibly wind stress).
- Compare results to TOPEX/POSEIDON and NSCAT observations collected during the same time period to quantitatively assess recoverability.
The data used in this study was kindly provided Dr. Jim Garvin of the Goddard Space Flight Center, who was the Principal Investigator of the SLA-01 mission. Future work will focus on analysis of data from the SLA-02 mission, which flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-85) in August, 1997.
SLA-02 was flown in a higher inclination orbit so covered a broader expanse of the ocean surface than SLA-01 did. In addition, it had a GPS capability to provide improved tracking capability, a variable gain amplifier to minimize pulse saturation, and a solar rejection filter to exclude extraneous optical backscatter at the laser wavelength (1064 nm), thus facilitating waveform calibration. Like SLA-01, SLA-02 was built in the
Laser Remote Sensing
Branch
in the Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics
at Goddard's Space Flight Center, by the same people who built MOLA, our altimeter now at Mars.
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address comments to:
Mark Behn (mbehn@mit.edu)