2011 Images of the Month

Altimetry enable to monitor wetland surfaces in Siberia as well as river run-offs. Comparisons between those and precipitation lead to look for water missing to balance the water budget.

Models enable to simulate the ocean. By changing the parameters of those models, the different influences and sources of the ocean variability (including the ocean itself) can be discriminated, and compared to altimetry measurements.

Comparisons between tiny crustaceans concentrations measured during an oceanographic campaign and geostrophic currents deduced from altimetry enable to better understand the distribution of zooplankton in the Humboldt current system.

Altimetry enable to observe eddies all around the oceans. Some specific features show up from year to year, with some variability. They can thus be measured and studied.

Altimetry provides marine forecast models with wave heights over the whole oceans. Thus phenomena born at sea, like the Southern swells in the Indian ocean, can be better anticipated.

Sea ice around Antarctica mostly forms and melts each year, thus covering different areas. Altimetry can observe sea ice in different ways, in particular in taking into account the shape of the radar echoes (their "peakiness").

Waves are one of the most impressive and dangerous ocean features. Extreme waves, up to 17 m high can be measured by altimetry, over the nearly twenty years of data now available

Intricate areas like the Mozambique Channel demands higher resolution data to be better studied. Improving altimetry data resolution can help.

Using altimetry, ocean models can help determine the best route for a ship with respect to the currents, thus saving fuel.

A new altimetry-based dataset tracks eddies between october 1992 and decembre 2008. Their proprieties and trajectories are thus analysed.

With now more than 16 years of altimetry data, get a second look at the variability computed from the whole time series.

La Niña is wreaking havoc in the Equatorial Pacific, and has still some stamina to stay on till Spring. Altimetry continues to monitor such phenomena, to better understand and forecast them.