Joint sun-glitter and radar imagery of surface slicks

A method is proposed to retrieve and interpret fine spatial variations of the sea surface roughness in sun glitter imagery. Observed sun glitter brightness anomalies are converted using a transfer function determined from the smoothed shape of sun glitter brightness. The method is applied to MODIS and MERIS sun glitter imagery of natural oil seeps and the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The short-scale roughness variations in the presence of mineral oils slicks are consistently extracted and compared to variations associated with the biogenic slicks. In doing so, the wind speed dependency on the roughness anomalies is also considered. A comparison to normalized radar cross section (NRCS) anomalies taken from the corresponding high resolution ASAR images is performed, and similarities as well as differences are investigated. The results document significant benefit from the synergetic use of sun glitter and radar imagery for detection and monitoring of surface slicks.