Remote sensing of ocean waves by polarimetric SAR

A new method to measure ocean wave slope spectra using fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (POLSAR) data was developed without the need for a complex hydrodynamic modulation transform function. There is no explicit use of a hydrodynamic modulation transfer function. This function is not clearly known and is based on hydrodynamic assumptions. The method is different from those developed by Schuler and colleagues or Pottier but complements their methods. The results estimated from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) C-band polarimetric SAR data show that the ocean wavelength, wave direction, and significant wave height are in agreement with buoy measurements. The proposed method can be employed by future satellite missions such as RADARSAT-2.

Highly nonlinear internal solitary waves over the continental shelf of the northwestern South China Sea

Large amplitude internal solitary waves (ISWs) often exhibit highly nonlinear effects and may contribute significantly to mixing and energy transporting in the ocean. We observed highly nonlinear ISWs over the continental shelf of the northwestern South China Sea (19A degrees 35'N, 112A degrees E) in May 2005 during the Wenchang Internal Wave Experiment using in-situ time series data from an array of temperature and salinity sensors, and an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP). We summarized the characteristics of the ISWs and compared them with those of existing internal wave theories. Particular attention has been paid to characterizing solitons in terms of the relationship between shape and amplitude-width. Comparison between theoretical prediction and observation results shows that the high nonlinearity of these waves is better represented by the second-order extended Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) theory than the first-order KdV model. These results indicate that the northwestern South China Sea (SCS) is rich in highly nonlinear ISWs that are an indispensable part of the energy budget of the internal waves in the northern South China Sea.

Mud mass transport due to waves based on an empirical rheology model featured by hysteresis loop

A vertical 2-D water-mud numerical model is developed for estimating the rate of mud mass transport under wave action. A nonlinear semi-empirical rheology model featured by remarkable hysteresis loops in the relationships of the shear stress versus both the shear strain and the rate of shear strain of mud is applied to this water mud model. A logarithmic grid in the vertical direction is employed for numerical treatment, which increases the resolution of the flow in the neighborhood of both sides of the interface. Model verifications are given through comparisons between the calculated and the measured mud mass transport velocities as well as wave height changes. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A study of internal solitary waves observed on the continental shelf in the northwestern South China Sea

Based on in-situ time series data from the acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) and thermistor chain in Wenchang area, a sequence of internal solitary wave (ISW) packets was observed in September 2005, propagating northwest on the continental shelf of the northwestern South China Sea (SCS). Corresponding to different stratification of the water column and tidal condition, both elevation and depression ISWs were observed at the same mooring location with amplitude of 35 m and 25 m respectively in different days. Regular arrival of the remarkable ISW packets at approximately the diurnal tidal period and the dominance of diurnal internal waves in the study area, strongly suggest that the main energy source of the waves is the diurnal tide. Notice that the wave packets were all riding on the troughs and shoulders of the internal tides, they were probably generated locally from the shelf break by the evolution of the internal tides due to nonlinear and dispersive effects.

Roles of equatorial waves and western boundary reflection in the seasonal circulation of the equatorial Indian Ocean

An ocean general circulation model (OGCM) is used to study the roles of equatorial waves and western boundary reflection in the seasonal circulation of the equatorial Indian Ocean. The western boundary reflection is defined as the total Kelvin waves leaving the western boundary, which include the reflection of the equatorial Rossby waves as well as the effects of alongshore winds, off-equatorial Rossby waves, and nonlinear processes near the western boundary. The evaluation of the reflection is based on a wave decomposition of the OGCM results and experiments with linear models. It is found that the alongshore winds along the east coast of Africa and the Rossby waves in the off-equatorial areas contribute significantly to the annual harmonics of the equatorial Kelvin waves at the western boundary. The semiannual harmonics of the Kelvin waves, on the other hand, originate primarily from a linear reflection of the equatorial Rossby waves. The dynamics of a dominant annual oscillation of sea level coexisting with the dominant semiannual oscillations of surface zonal currents in the central equatorial Indian Ocean are investigated. These sea level and zonal current patterns are found to be closely related to the linear reflections of the semiannual harmonics at the meridional boundaries. Because of the reflections, the second baroclinic mode resonates with the semiannual wind forcing; that is, the semiannual zonal currents carried by the reflected waves enhance the wind-forced currents at the central basin. Because of the different behavior of the zonal current and sea level during the reflections, the semiannual sea levels of the directly forced and reflected waves cancel each other significantly at the central basin. In the meantime, the annual harmonic of the sea level remains large, producing a dominant annual oscillation of sea level in the central equatorial Indian Ocean. The linear reflection causes the semiannual harmonics of the incoming and reflected sea levels to enhance each other at the meridional boundaries. In addition, the weak annual harmonics of sea level in the western basin, resulting from a combined effect of the western boundary reflection and the equatorial zonal wind forcing, facilitate the dominance by the semiannual harmonics near the western boundary despite the strong local wind forcing at the annual period. The Rossby waves are found to have a much larger contribution to the observed equatorial semiannual oscillations of surface zonal currents than the Kelvin waves. The westward progressive reversal of seasonal surface zonal currents along the equator in the observations is primarily due to the Rossby wave propagation.

Second-order Stokes wave solutions for intefacial waves in three-layer stratified fluid with background current

In this paper, interfacial waves in three-layer stratified fluid with background current are investigated using a perturbation method, and the second-order asymptotic solutions of the velocity potentials and the second-order Stokes wave solutions of the associated elevations of the interfacial waves are presented based on the small amplitude wave theory, and the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability of interfacial waves is studied. As expected, for three-layer stratified fluid with background current, the first-order asymptotic solutions (linear wave solutions), dispersion relation and the second-order asymptotic solutions derived depend on not only the depths and densities of the three-layer fluid but also the background current of the fluids, and the second-order Stokes wave solutions of the associated elevations of the interfacial waves describe not only the second-order nonlinear wave-wave interactions between the interfacial waves but also the second-order nonlinear interactions between the interfacial waves and currents. It is also noted that the solutions obtained from the present work include the theoretical results derived by Chen et al (2005) as a special case. It also shows that with the given wave number k (real number) the interfacial waves may show Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.

A kind of extended Korteweg-de Vries equation and solitary wave solutions for interfacial waves in a two-fluid system

This paper considers interfacial waves propagating along the interface between a two-dimensional two-fluid with a flat bottom and a rigid upper boundary. There is a light fluid layer overlying a heavier one in the system, and a small density difference exists between the two layers. It just focuses on the weakly non-linear small amplitude waves by introducing two small independent parameters: the nonlinearity ratio epsilon, represented by the ratio of amplitude to depth, and the dispersion ratio mu, represented by the square of the ratio of depth to wave length, which quantify the relative importance of nonlinearity and dispersion. It derives an extended KdV equation of the interfacial waves using the method adopted by Dullin et al in the study of the surface waves when considering the order up to O(mu(2)). As expected, the equation derived from the present work includes, as special cases, those obtained by Dullin et al for surface waves when the surface tension is neglected. The equation derived using an alternative method here is the same as the equation presented by Choi and Camassa. Also it solves the equation by borrowing the method presented by Marchant used for surface waves, and obtains its asymptotic solitary wave solutions when the weakly nonlinear and weakly dispersive terms are balanced in the extended KdV equation.

电离层行进式扰动的GPS台网监测研究

In this dissertation, we investigated two types of traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs)/gravity waves (GWs) triggered separately by auroral energy input during super geomagnetic storms and solar terminator (ST) under quiet geomagnetic conditions (kp<3+) using TEC measurements from the global network of GPS receivers. Research into the generation and propagation of TIDs/GWs during storms greatly enhance our understandings on the evolution processes of energy transportation from the high-latitude’s magnetosphere to the low-latitude ionosphere and the conjugated effect of TIDs propagation between the northern and southern hemispheres. Our results revealed that the conjugacy of propagation direction between the northern and southern hemispheres was subject to the influence of Coriolis force. We also figure out the evolution processes of ionospheric disturbances at the global scale. These are important topics that had not been well addressed previously. In addition, we also obtained thee wave structures of medium scale TIDs excited by the solar terminator (ST) moving over the northern America and physical mechanisms involved. Our observations confirm that the ST is a stable and repetitive source of ionospheric wave disturbances and the evidence of solar terminator generated disturbances has been demonstrated experimentally via the GPS TEC measurement. The main researches and results of this dissertation are as follows. First, the global traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) during the drastic magnetic storms of October 29–31, 2003 were analyzed using the Global Position System (GPS) total electron content (TEC) data observed in the Asian-Australian, European and North American sectors. We collected the most comprehensive set of the TEC data from more than 900 GPS stations on the International GNSS Services (IGS) website and introduce here a strategy that combines polynomial fitting and multi-channel maximum entropy spectral analysis to obtain TID parameters. Moreover, in collaboration with my thesis advisor, I have developed an imaging technique of 2-dimensional map of TIDs structures to obtain spatial and temporal maps of large scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (LSTIDs). The clear structures of TEC perturbations map during the passage of TIDs were displayed. The results of our study are summarized as follows: (1) Large-scale TIDs (LSTIDs) and medium-scale TIDs (MSTIDs) were detected in all three sectors after the sudden commencement (SC) of the magnetic storm, and their features showed longitudinal and latitudinal dependences. The duration of TIDs was longer at higher latitudes than at middle latitudes, with a maximum of about 16 h. The TEC variation amplitude of LSTIDs was larger in the North American sector than in the two other sectors. At the lower latitudes, the ionospheric perturbations were more complicated, and their duration and amplitude were relatively longer and larger. (2) The periods and phase speeds of TIDs were different in these three sectors. In Europe, the TIDs propagated southward; in North America and Asia, the TIDs propagated southwestward; in the near-equator region, the disturbances propagated with the azimuth (the angle of the propagation direction of the LSTIDs measured clockwise from due north with 0°) of 210° showing the influence of Coriolis force; in the Southern Hemisphere, the LSTIDs propagated conjugatedly northwestward. Both the southwestward and northeastward propagating LSTIDs are found in the equatorial region. These results mean that the Coriolis effect cannot be ignored for the wave propagation of LSTIDs and that the propagation direction is correlated with the polar magnetic activity. (3) The day (day of year: 301) before the SC (sudden commencement) of magnetic storm, we observed a sudden TEC skip disturbances (±10 TECU). It should be a response for the high flux of proton during the solar flare event, but not the magnetic storms. Next, the most comprehensive and dense GPS network’s data from North-America region were used in this paper to analyze the medium scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) which were generated by the moving solar terminator during the quiet days in 2005. We applied the multi-channel maximum entropy spectral analysis to calculated TID parameters, and found that the occurrence of ST-MSTIDs depends on the seasonal variations. The results of our study are summarized as follows: (1) MSTIDs stimulated by the moving ST (ST-MSTIDs) are detected at mid-latitudes after the passage of the solar terminator with the life time of 2～3 hours and the variation amplitude of 0.2～0.8 TECU. Spectral analysis indicated that the horizontal wavelength, average period, horizontal phase velocity of the MSTIDs are around 300±150 km，150±80 m/s and 25±15 min, respectively. In addition, ST-MSTIDs have wave fronts elongating the moving ST direction and almost parallel to ST. (2) The statistical results demonstrate that the dusk MSTIDs stimulated by ST is more obvious than the dawn MSTIDs in summer. On the contrary, the more-pronounced dawn MSTIDs occurs in winter. (3) Further analysis indicates that the seasonal variations of ST-MSTIDs occurrence frequency are most probably related to the seasonal differences of the variations of EUV flux in the ionosphere region and recombination process during sunrise and sunset period at mid-latitudes. Statistical study of occurrence characteristics of TIDs using the GPS network in North-American and European during solar maximum, In conclusion, statistical studies of the propagation characteristics of TIDs, which excited by the two common origins including geomagnetic storms and moving solar terminator, were involved with global GPS TEC databasein this thesis. We employed the multichannel maximum entropy spectral analysis method to diagnose the characteristics of propagation and evolvement of ionospheric disturbances, also, the characteristics of their regional distribution and climatological variations were revealed by the statistic analysis. The results of these studies can improve our knowledge about the energy transfer in the solar-terrestrial system and the coupling process between upper and lower atmosphere (thermosphere-ionosphere-mesosphere). On the other hand, our results of the investigation on TIDs generated by particular linear origin such as ST are important for developing ionospheric irregularity physics and modeling the transionosphere radio wave propagation. Besides, the GPS TEC representation of the ST-generated ionospheric structure suggests a better possibility for investigating this phenomenon. Subsequently, there are scientific meaning of the result of this dissertation to deeply discuss the energy transfer and coupling in the ionosphere, as well as realistic value to space weather forecast in the ionosphere region.