Monitoring The Ocean From Space

Ocean observing satellites are used in meteorology, oceanography and marine operations pertaining to maritime security, search and rescue, ship routing, ice, oil spill and flood monitoring. They are also used extensively for coastal zone management and in research programs pertaining to climate change, coral bleaching, pollutant transport, eutrophication, fisheries and water quality.

In combination with other capabilities, ocean observing satellites, which are sometimes called coastal observing or Earth observing satellites, contribute to the emerging fields of operational oceanography, ocean intelligence and ocean weather forecasting.

Which Satellite Sensor Should I Use?

Ocean observing satellite sensors can be categorized as follows:  land-optimized multispectral, marine multispectral, thermal infrared, active and passive microwave sensors. This does not include civilian spaceborne hyperspectral sensors, which is an emerging capability. Your application (i.e. requirements) determines the appropriate category. Examples of applicable thermal IR sensors, circa 2006, are provided in the following table.

Thermal IR Sensors For Marine Monitoring

Advantages And Disadvantages

Advantages: Ocean and coastal observing satellites operate covertly, provide wide-area (i.e. synoptic) coverage, deliver local, regional and global information and can do so with a single sensor. Other platforms may have some of these operating features, but no other platform has them all.

Disadvantages: Earth observing satellite sensors only observe surface waters and the temporal resolution (i.e. how often it samples a given location) of a polar-orbiting satellite is limited – usually on the order of days to weeks. Temporal resolution can be improved by operating the same sensor on several polar-orbiting satellites (i.e. a constellation) or by operating it on a geostationary satellite.