SAR-Related Stress Variability in! the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer (MABL) (HI-RES ARI)

By variably stressing the se. surface, secondary circulations within the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) can modulate the sea-surface wave field and so can produce discernible signatures on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of the oc=an. These nficroscale circulations have horizontal wavelengths on the order of one to ten times the boundary layer depth, or approximately one to ten kin, and temporal scales on the order of one to ten hours. Also, the frequent occurrence of two-dimensional mesoscale atmospheric circulations in response to the sea surface temperature (SST) gradient along the northwest wall of the Gulf Stream adds an atmospheric component to Gulf Stream signatures on SAR images having cross-stream scales of 1 to 50 km. Our long-term goal is to develop methods for diagnosing both the form and tie effect on sea-surface stress patterns of these buoyantly forced MABL flows, given only values of the large-scale meteorological and oceanographic parameters. As briefly sumnmarized below, we continue to make strong progress on this problem using several interacting, complementary techniques that range from data analysis to model development. Scientific Objectives: Our most immediate goal is to determine how effective these two- and three-dimensiona