Description and contextualization of the subject

This subject is offered at the second semester of the master, after the students have received some basic training in Fundamentals of Ocean Science at the Universities of Bourdeaux, Southampton or Açores.



The instructors envision this subject as a tool that the students can apply in their future professional activities that can range from research to consulting firms which need to hire personnel for processing information retrieved by instruments on board of satellites.



Satellites allow remotely sensing many properties of the ocean or the atmosphere of relevance for the analysis of marine environment. The main aim of this course is to allow students develop skills in the use of satellite data for their future own research. In order to achieve this aim, the students are provided not only a theoretical formation in the topic, but also a practical one, particularly oriented to the use of satellite data. Since the use of satellite data in an advanced manner involves some use of computer languages (R is mainly used in the course), a desirable background in the students is some knowledge of computer programming. Acquiring the skill to autonomously process satellite information by means of a computer system allows the student to retrieve data reflecting the state of Marine Environment and use it in his/her future research.

Learning outcomes of the subject

At the end of the course, the student should be able to autonomously analyze atmospheric and oceanic data retrieved by different instruments onboard satellites covering topics such as sea surface temperature, chlorophyll, altimetry, wave height amongst others.



The student must be able to retrieve data from the public servers, open the data files, select periods, areas, process data at different levels and retrieve geophysical values from the datasets.



The unit is oriented to applications with climate in mind (analysis of datasets oriented to long-term periods, decades and beyond).

Ordinary call: orientations and renunciation

Students must attend all the sessions, teaching is face to face.



The students must solve an open book quiz based on multiple choice questions drawn from the lectures given during the course.



Additionally, the students must solve some projects dealing with practical cases such as conversion of information from satellites at different levels of processing, the analysis of multiple years of data at a limited region or processing some information from some variables and make some plots or maps with it.

Extraordinary call: orientations and renunciation

The students who do not pass during the first call have the option to take a written exam at the end of June. In this exam, many multiple choice questions about the topics covered during the lectures will be presented to the student.



The grading policy indicated in this guide migh be changed if health authorities require so. In that case, the changes will be announced with ample time, considering the strategies and tools needed to allow the students to be evaluated with equity and justice.

Temary

PART 1 SATELLITE OCEANOGRAPHY



1. Sea Surface Temperature: Global warming and ENSO. The satellite record of Sea Surface Temperature is the longest one that exists and is, therefore, very interesting for showing the ability of satellite-based measurements to perform analysis of climate variability. Since El Niño-Southern Oscillation is a phenomenon that manifests itself in the warming of large parts of the Pacific Ocean, satellite based SST measurements are a fundamental tool to identify ENSO-based variability. Some of the computer practical sessions are structured around this variable and topic.



2. Ocean colour: Harmful algae blooms and other phytoplankton blooms. From the point of view of ocean productivity (and life), ocean color products are an important tool.



3. Altimetry: Sea level rise, currents and eddies. Satellite-based altimetry plays important roles both for the analysis of the long-term evolution of sea level and also, at a regional scale, because geostrophy allows to derive currents from Sea Level Height anomalies. Many of the computer sessions involve the use of sea wave information from microwave platforms.



4. Imaging radars: Oil spills and other applications. The kind of radars used for satellite altimetry is not adequate to follow features in the ocean such as oil spills because of the sampling rate, that is too low. Imaging radars cover the gap for these kind of applications.







PART 2 METEOROLOGY



5. Propagation of radiation through the atmosphere for satellite applications. For any kind of satellite-based measurement, the satellite radiation must cross the atmosphere between the satellite and the earth surface. Understanding how is the propagation of radiation explained and measured and which are the main processes (absorption, scattering and emission) involved will be very useful.



6. Atmospheric thermodynamics and dynamics. Some of the important characteristics of the atmosphere that affect the propagation of radiation (clouds, atmospheric stability) are related to the thermodynamics properties of the air and the way the atmospheric circulation works. These basis are presented here, with a particular emphasis on satellite vertical sounders such as MSU, AMSU or ATMS.



7. Atmosphere‐ocean coupling. The coupling of the atmosphere and the ocean is mediated by several properties, and wind is one of the important ones. Satellite measurements of wind at the ocean surface (Quickscat, ERS, Envisat) allow to study this coupling with great detail. This is a topic also covered by one of the practical sessions.



8. Satellite meteorology and climate. For some of the satellite-based measurements, the available information spans (from records produced by different satellites) more than twenty years. Therefore, this information can be applied to climate studies, and special techniques are used in order to be able to process such a big amount of data. This is covered in one of the computer practical sessions.

Bibliography

Compulsory materials

The only mandatory material consists in the handouts made available to students by e-gela, the electronic learning system provided by the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

Basic bibliography

W. G. Rees (2013). Physical principles of remote sensing, 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press.



I. M. Vardavas and F. W. Taylor (2006) Radiation and Climate. Oxford Science Publications.



C. Elachi and J. van Zyl (2006) Introduction to the physics and techniques of remote sensing, 2nd Ed. Wiley and Sons.



G. W. Petty (2006) A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation, 2nd ed. Sundog Publishing



D. Pugh (2004) Changing Sea levels. Effects of Tides, Weather and Climate, Cambridge University Press.



SSALTO/DUACS User Handbook: (M)SLA and (M)ADT Near-Real Time and delayed Time Products. (2013) AVISO.



Rosmorduc, V., J. Benveniste, E. Bronner, S. Dinardo, O. Lauret, C. Maheu, M. Milagro, N. Picot, Radar Altimetry Tutorial, J. Benveniste and N. Picot Ed., http://www.altimetry.info, 2011.



E. Paradis (2005) R for beginners, http://cran.us.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Paradis-rdebuts_en.pdf



W. N. Venables, D. M. Smith and the R Core Team (2016) An Introduction to R. Notes on R: A Programming Environment for Data Analysis and Graphics, v. 3.3.2. https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-intro.pdf

In-depth bibliography

I. M. Vardavas and F. W. Taylor (2006) Radiation and Climate. Oxford Science Publications.







C. Elachi and J. van Zyl (2006) Introduction to the physics and techniques of remote sensing, 2nd Ed. Wiley and Sons.







G. W. Petty (2006) A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation, 2nd ed. Sundog Publishing

Journals

Science https: //www.sciencemag.org/







Nature Climate Change: https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

Links

https://www.copernicus.eu/en







https://sentinels.copernicus.eu/web/sentinel/home







https://www.esa.int/







https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/







https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/