DETECTING DIPOLE RING SEPARATRICES WITH ZEBRA PALETTES

Two new analysis methods applicable to remote sensing of the sea surfa ce are described, The first is a zebra false-color palette that combin es a slowly varying rainbow with a rapid gray-scale sinusoid, and the other is a routine that tracks the thermal separatrix, or dividing lin e, between two (or more) circulation regimes, Used together, a signifi cant increase in data retention is achieved compared to traditional al gorithms based on frontal digitizations. These two methods are applied to historical infrared data of Gulf Stream rings from the western Nor th Atlantic. The rings data indicate anticyclonic rings usually have a t least one clyclonic companion and are more appropriately modeled as dipoles, Several examples of cyclonic rings in the Sargasso Sea are se en with anticyclonic companions and are also believed to be dipoles, T he separatrix method is shown to provide reliable rotation rates for t hese vortex systems.