Remote Sensing Applications - Marine Surface Films - page 293

first factor is associated with the formation of an unstable atmospheric
boundary layer over the Kuroshio due to the change of sign in the differ-
ence between the air temperature T a and the sea surface temperature T s
(Mitnik and Lobanov 1991, Beal et al. 1997). The linear structures with an
alternating grey and light brightness, which are distinguishable in area 7
(Figure 4), support this suggestion. These features are imprints of the roll
vortices that formed in the marine boundary layer of the atmosphere (Al-
pers and Brümmer 1994, Thompson et al. 1983). They indicate that the
wind direction pointed from the north to the south, typical of the winter
monsoon. An additional NRCS increment was due to an increase in the
relative wind velocity over the northward (opposite the wind direction)
Kuroshio flow. However, the resulting wind speed did not exceed 5-6 ms -1 ,
since it did not prevent the expression of such dynamic oceanic pheno-
mena as the small-scale eddies 9-11 on the SAR image.
Fig. 4. ERS-2 SAR image of the Kuroshio east of Taiwan acquired on December
29, 1997, at 02:29 UTC (copyright European Space Agency). Dashed square
marks the boundaries of fragment shown in Figure 6