ocean regimes. Research should be undertaken to determine and 

 quantify the sensitivity of horizontal distributions of sea 

 surface temperature and of mixed layer structure to k distri- 

 butive patterns. 



b. If meso-scale and smaller individual patches of k and 

 phytoplankton pigments can be positively identified in several 

 CZCS images over periods of several days, then the trajectories 

 of those patches can be used as Lagrangian estimates of 

 synoptic-scale ocean currents. This application would be 

 directly analogous to the use of cloud drift winds, derived 

 from GOES VISSR data, in meteorogical analyses. The NSF Warm 

 Core Rings Experiment is now using CZCS -derived products to 

 augment thermal imagery for ring translation studies. Initial 

 scrutiny of a few CZCS image sequences shows the data to be 

 provocative and promising, but results to date are too 

 preliminary and tentative to draw conclusions about the general 

 utility of this method as a tool in future oceanic studies. 



c. Over synoptic-length scales, significant changes in ocean 

 optical properties are frequently (perhaps usually) associated 

 with changes in temperature and salinity. This occurs because 

 separate water masses frequently have different chemical, 

 biological, optical, temperature, and salinity characteristics. 

 Optical contrast between water mass, therefore, causes many 

 synoptic-scale ocean circulation features to be visualized as 

 two-dimensional patterns of ocean color (and therefore k and 

 pigments) in CZCS images. Examples of CZCS-observed color 

 patterns which have clear (albeit as yet qualitative) dynamical 

 interpretations, are warm core rings, the Gulf Stream front 

 (Mueller and LaViolette, 1981), and synoptic-scale eddies and 

 frontal features in the California Current System. A similar, 

 and even more direct, case may be made for Sea Surface 

 Temperature (SST) patterns in infrared images measured from 

 space. Taken together, infrared SST and optical patterns can 

 hypothetical ly provide empirical sets of time-varying 

 horizontal interpolation/extrapolation functions applicable to 



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