Retrieving ocean surface current by 4-D variational assimilation of sea surface temperature images

In this article we propose a new method to estimate ocean mesoscale structures of the surface current velocity by processing sea surface satellite images. Assuming that the intensity level can be described by a transport–diffusion equation, the proposed approach is based on variational assimilation of image observations within a simple transport–diffusion model. This approach permits to retrieve the current velocity field from a sequence of satellite images. Results of processing synthetic data and real NOAA-AVHRR satellite images are presented and commented.