Estimation of oceanic surface velocity fields using wavelets
Guillermo Tonsmann, John M. Tyler · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1999
This paper presents a new method for the estimation of oceanic surface velocity fields using wavelet decomposition of Sea Surface Temperature images (SST). This method requires the use of two SST images of the same region taken within a known time interval. Wavelet decompositions are performed on both images to obtain approximations that will be compared for local displacements. These local displacements are smoothed to eliminate noise and to generate a rough initial estimate of the velocity field. Then this estimate is iteratively refined by a similar analysis over more detailed images produced by inverse wavelet transforms. A description of the method and its assumptions are presented with initial results.