Estimating parameters of a two-layer stratified ocean from polarity conversion of internal solitary waves observed in satellite SAR images

This paper presents a method for estimating parameters of a two-layer stratified ocean using satellite SAR images. According to weak nonlinearity shallow water theory, internal solitary waves (ISWs) in stratified oceans may be either depression or elevation waves, depending on the sign of the quadratic nonlinearity coefficient in the KdV equation. It has been confirmed that ISWs can convert their polarity when passing through a turning point, where the quadratic nonlinearity coefficient changes sign. For a two-layer stratified ocean, the turning point is located where the upper and lower layer depths are equal. The authors suggest that depression, elevation and broadening ISWs can be discerned according to their different signatures in SAR images. It is also found that a SAR image can record a continuous evolution process from depression to elevation ISWs in its spatial domain, under conditions of a spatially inhomogeneous ocean environment. Therefore, the upper and lower layer depths can be calculated by determining the polarity conversion of ISWs observed in satellite SAR images. Furthermore, the density difference between the upper and lower layers can also be estimated, when the wave speed is known. We extract ocean stratification parameters, including upper layer depth and density difference, from polarity conversion of ISWs observed in a RADARSAT-1 SAR image taken over the northeastern South China Sea. Comparing the estimated results with field measurements, we find that this method can estimate the upper layer depth with considerable success. In estimating the density difference between the upper and lower layers, it also gives a quite reasonable result.