Atmospheric fronts off the east coast of Taiwan studied by ERS synthetic aperture radar imagery

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images acquired by the European Remote Sensing satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2 over the east coast of Taiwan around 10:30 local time often show frontal features that are located typically 50 km off the coast. We show that they are not sea surface manifestations of a land breeze front, but of a quasi-stationary atmospheric front that persists over the whole day or even over the next day(s). Evidence for this interpretation is obtained mainly from the comparison of the SAR images with sequences of cloud images acquired by the Japanese Geostationary Meteorological Satellite GMS-4.