MONITORING MESOSCALE SURFACE FEATURES OF THE OCEAN VIA AN AUTOMATED ANALYSIS

THE OBJECTIVE OF THE PROPOSED RESEARCH PROGRAM FOR PHASE I WILL BE TO DEVELOP, IMPLEMENT, AND DEMONSTRATE THE FEASIBILITY OF A METHODOLOGY FOR CALCULATING VELOCITY FLOW FIELDS OF MESOSCALE FEATURES IN THE OCEAN. THE RESEARCH WILL FOCUS ON THREE COMPONENTS OF THE PROBLEM: 1) RAPID REGISTRATION OF A TEMPORAL SEQUENCE OF MULTISPECTRAL IMAGES THROUGH A COMBINED STATISTICAL/ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BASED PROCEDURE, 2) RECONSTRUCTION OF A NOISY SEQUENCE OF TIME AND SPATIALLY VARYING IMAGES TO REDUCE ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS USING ADAPTIVE STATISTICAL TECHNIQUES, AND 3) CALCULATION OF VELOCITY FLOW FIELDS VIA ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE METHODS. THE METHODOLOGY WILL BE APPLIED FIRST TO SIMULATED DATA TO EVALUATE THE ROBUSTNESS AND COMPUTATIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF THE PROCEDURES. THE APPROACH WILL THEN BE USED TO TRACK MESOSCALE FEATURES EXHIBITED IN THE THERMAL CHANNELS OF THE AVHRR DATA FROM THE NOAA SATELLITES.