IDENTIFICATION OF MODELED OCEAN PLUMES IN GREENLAND GYRE ERS-1 SAR DATA

Oceanic convective plumes modeled with a thermobaric large-eddy simula tion and driven by conditions similar to those of the Greenland Sea ar e compared to observations from ERS-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) d ata from the Greenland Sea for the winter of 1992. In both form and si ze the two representations are seen to compare favorably. The plume-fi lled area of the SAR image occupies a region about 20 km by 90 km at t he ice edge of the open water in ''Nordbukta'', the large seasonal ice retreat, in the ''Odden' ice protuberance in the southern Greenland g yre. In the SAR data the plumes appear to be ice covered while the con vective-return areas are open.