OCEANOGRAPHY FROM SPACE IN SUPPORT OF NAVAL OPERATIONS

During the past decade, satellite remote sensing has become a powerful tool in the U.S. Navy's efforts to characterize the ocean environment in support of military operations. The Fleet Numerical Meteorology an d Oceanography Center (Fleet Numerical) and the Naval Oceanographic Of fice (NAVOCEANO), are the Navy's central sites for the receipt and pro cessing of satellite data for meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) applications. METOC officers at regional centers, detachments, and af loat also receive and exploit a variety of satellite data. In this pap er, we discuss the use of satellite data for oceanographic analysis an d prediction. A wide variety of satellite-borne sensors are exploited, including foreign/civilian, visible/infrared/microwave, and passive/a ctive. Products from these sensors cove horizontal spatial scales, ran ging from global (e.g., sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) from the Advan ced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR)) to local (e.g., near-shor e bottom features from Landsat Thematic Mapper); encompass the vertica l spatial range of sea surface, water column, and bottom features (e.g ., altimetry-derived products); and characterize temporal scales, rang ing from seasonal (e.g., optical climatologies from Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) imagery) to real time (e.g., ocean surface winds from the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I)). We provide an overview o f the sensors utilized, ground segment processing flows, products gene rated, and the oceanographic applications supported by satellite remot e sensing at the Navy's central sites and on scene.