New developments in satellite oceanography and current measurements

The study of the ocean from satellites has many obvious advantages. The potential of remote sensing techniques has caused increasing numbers of investigators from the oceanographic research community to turn toward satellite sensors as viable alternatives for data collection. Some of the achievements and the problems of applying these techniques to oceanography have been summarized by Apel (1976), Szekielda (1976), Huh and Nobel (1976), Schanda (1976) and AGARD (1977), but real data used in these discussions are from visible and infrared sensors primarily. Applications of the active microwave sensors to oceanographic studies started only recently. This paper is not subject to U.S. copyright. Published in 1979 by the American Geophysical Union.