11th Conference on Satellite Meteorology and Oceanography

Monday, 15 October 2001
Accumulation of floating marine debris simulated by surface currents derived from satellite data
Masahisa Kubota, Tokai University, Shimizu, Shizuoka, Japan
Since floating matter in the ocean such as plastic products can survive for many years and seriously influences on many sea birds and marine mammals, ocean dumping is one of earth environmental problems. Wakata and Sugimori(1990) simulated the Lagrangian motion of floating matters by using the surface current field based on shipdrift data. The mechanism of the high density area of floating matter north of Hawaii, which was found by Wakata and Sugimori(1990) was clarified by Kubota(1994). In the present study the accumulation and movement of floating marine debris is simulated by using satellite-derived surface current fields. The surface currents consists of Ekman Drift derived from a microwave scatterometer and geostrophic currents derived from a microwave altimeter data.

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