Ocean Radar Observations of Ship-Induced Instabilities in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Abstract

Both natural and artificial (ship induced) features of atmospheric motions can be seen in ocean radar imagery. Observations of a surface wake extending downstream from the atmospheric vortices in a thermal ship plume are described. To demonstrate the usefulness of radar systems in observing the ocean surface, the authors studied hot ship exhaust using a 2.25-cm-wavelength airborne radar. The ship-induced feature in the polarimetric radar images was observed in the ocean surface cold environment with moderate horizontal ambient winds. The smokelike feature appears only in the vertically polarized images, not in the horizontally polarized images.