Trying to find time to update this page. Thank you for being patient!
As mentioned, my current research interests involve analyzing the skin sea surface temperature (skin SST). The skin SST is a very important parameter particularly in air-sea interfacial interactions given that it essentially drives the exchange of fluxes within this boundary. The skin SST has to be as accurate as possible and it should ideally be the temperature measured directly at the ocean-atmosphere interface for accurate calculations of fluxes, SST correction algorithms, air-sea and climate modelling, etc. In the old days, buckets of water were pulled up from ships and a thermometer was stuck into this bucket to measure the SST. Nowadays, with all the wonderful technology, high-tech equipment and wonderful invention of satellites and remote sensing devices (all thanks to brilliant researchers and scientists) we can measure this SST parameter with much more accuracy, precision and even obtain vertical profiles! For my research, I've been using a passive remote sensing spectrometer that operates in the infrared (IR) regime in attempts to retrieve the vertical profile of the skin SST. These instruments are really useful because IR radiation is practically opaque to water (the penetration/emission depth in seawater is < 0.1 mm). In addition, being a remote sensing device, there won't be the issue of the skin SST layer getting disrupted.
What I have done so far is to use radiance spectras from a ship-board instrument called the Marine-Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (M-AERI) to retrieve the skin SST vertical profile. The main objective is to look at the gradient/curvature of this profile and relate the gradient to heat fluxes at the air-sea interface, specifically the longwave radiation. Attempting to retrieve a vertical profile in the top 0.1 mm from the ocean's surface is definitely as difficult as it sounds (imagine trying to profile the temperature at depths of about the thickness of a piece of copy paper) especially under an environment filled with uncertainties and errors. Furthermore, there are no in-situ measurements to verify the retrievals and the only way to establish that the retrievals are physically sound is through carefully thought-out and existing physical theories on how the skin SST layer is established. I've also attached a cartoon of the vertical temperature profile in the ocean obtained from the GHRSST website.
The main motivation behind studying the skin SST layer is in attempts to answer the following question: "If we know that an increase in greenhouse gases such as CO2 in the atmosphere leads to an increase in the incoming longwave radiation on the Earth's (ocean's) surface, and we know that longwave radiation is almost entirely absorbed within the top < 1 mm of the ocean's surface. How and why is the bulk of the ocean is warming?" And by bulk, I mean to say the top few hundreds to thousand of meters of the ocean. This warming of the ocean has been thoroughly documented. Here is a paper by Levitus et. al. (2012) which shows the increase in upper ocean heat content from years 1955-2010 through measurements made by Argo floats.
Here is an additional link (click here) of a guest commentary by Prof. Minnett and to let you ponder over the scientific question briefly described. I would just like to add that we are still trying to understand and hopefully provide an answer to this, so stay tuned!
Please click here for some of my posters and abstracts for conferences. I do my best to put one up every year. Thanks for reading and staying interested!
As mentioned, my current research interests involve analyzing the skin sea surface temperature (skin SST). The skin SST is a very important parameter particularly in air-sea interfacial interactions given that it essentially drives the exchange of fluxes within this boundary. The skin SST has to be as accurate as possible and it should ideally be the temperature measured directly at the ocean-atmosphere interface for accurate calculations of fluxes, SST correction algorithms, air-sea and climate modelling, etc. In the old days, buckets of water were pulled up from ships and a thermometer was stuck into this bucket to measure the SST. Nowadays, with all the wonderful technology, high-tech equipment and wonderful invention of satellites and remote sensing devices (all thanks to brilliant researchers and scientists) we can measure this SST parameter with much more accuracy, precision and even obtain vertical profiles! For my research, I've been using a passive remote sensing spectrometer that operates in the infrared (IR) regime in attempts to retrieve the vertical profile of the skin SST. These instruments are really useful because IR radiation is practically opaque to water (the penetration/emission depth in seawater is < 0.1 mm). In addition, being a remote sensing device, there won't be the issue of the skin SST layer getting disrupted.
What I have done so far is to use radiance spectras from a ship-board instrument called the Marine-Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (M-AERI) to retrieve the skin SST vertical profile. The main objective is to look at the gradient/curvature of this profile and relate the gradient to heat fluxes at the air-sea interface, specifically the longwave radiation. Attempting to retrieve a vertical profile in the top 0.1 mm from the ocean's surface is definitely as difficult as it sounds (imagine trying to profile the temperature at depths of about the thickness of a piece of copy paper) especially under an environment filled with uncertainties and errors. Furthermore, there are no in-situ measurements to verify the retrievals and the only way to establish that the retrievals are physically sound is through carefully thought-out and existing physical theories on how the skin SST layer is established. I've also attached a cartoon of the vertical temperature profile in the ocean obtained from the GHRSST website.
The main motivation behind studying the skin SST layer is in attempts to answer the following question: "If we know that an increase in greenhouse gases such as CO2 in the atmosphere leads to an increase in the incoming longwave radiation on the Earth's (ocean's) surface, and we know that longwave radiation is almost entirely absorbed within the top < 1 mm of the ocean's surface. How and why is the bulk of the ocean is warming?" And by bulk, I mean to say the top few hundreds to thousand of meters of the ocean. This warming of the ocean has been thoroughly documented. Here is a paper by Levitus et. al. (2012) which shows the increase in upper ocean heat content from years 1955-2010 through measurements made by Argo floats.
Here is an additional link (click here) of a guest commentary by Prof. Minnett and to let you ponder over the scientific question briefly described. I would just like to add that we are still trying to understand and hopefully provide an answer to this, so stay tuned!
Please click here for some of my posters and abstracts for conferences. I do my best to put one up every year. Thanks for reading and staying interested!