Coastal Ocean Surface Current Retrievals from Sequences of TerraSAR-X Images

Coastal surface currents have been computed for years from sequential infrared and more recently ocean color imagery using the Maximum Cross Correlation (MCC) technique. Preliminary results suggest that this MCC method may be applied to sequential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery yielding surface currents with a much higher spatial resolution which are independent of the presence of cloud cover which makes it impossible to use infrared or ocean color imagery. A requirement for the application of the MCC to SAR imagery is the presence of surface slicks, which are often related to ocean color patterns. Test applications are made to ENVISAT ASAR images.