Proceedings of the Symposium on Global and Environmental Monitoring: Proceedings of the Symposium on Global and Environmental Monitoring

Bibliographic data

Multivolume work

Persistent identifier:: 856665355

Title:: Proceedings of the Symposium on Global and Environmental Monitoring

Sub title:: techniques and impacts ; September 17 - 21, 1990, Victoria Conference Centre, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Year of publication:: 1990

Place of publication:: Victoria, BC

Publisher of the original:: [Verlag nicht ermittelbar]

Identifier (digital):: 856665355

Language:: English

Document type:: Multivolume work

Volume

Persistent identifier:: 856669164

Title:: Proceedings of the Symposium on Global and Environmental Monitoring

Sub title:: techniques and impacts; September 17 - 21, 1990, Victoria Conference Centre, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Scope:: XIV, 912 Seiten

Year of publication:: 1990

Place of publication:: Victoria, BC

Publisher of the original:: [Verlag nicht ermittelbar]

Identifier (digital):: 856669164

Illustration:: Illustrationen, Diagramme, Karten

Signature of the source:: ZS 312(28,7,1)

Language:: English

Usage licence:: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Editor:: International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Commission of Photographic and Remote Sensing Data

Publisher of the digital copy:: Technische Informationsbibliothek Hannover

Place of publication of the digital copy:: Hannover

Year of publication of the original:: 2016

Document type:: Volume

Collection:: Earth sciences

Chapter

Title:: [TP-3 OCEAN/COASTAL ZONE MONITORING]

Document type:: Multivolume work

Structure type:: Chapter

Chapter

Title:: MONITORING THE OCEANS WITH SATELLITE ALTIMETRY TECHNIQUES. Demitris Delikaraoglou, Nicholas Christou and Mario Berube

Document type:: Multivolume work

Structure type:: Chapter

disintegration of the polar ice sheets, with the surface glaciers as a major contributor to an associated sea-level rise. The ecosystems of Canada, which are intrinsically linked to climate will inevitably respond to these changes. In a major assessment of the greenhouse effect on Canada, research within Environment Canada suggests that across Canada there will be generally milder winters and warmer summers. The eastern and central parts of the country are likely to get drier, while the west and north will get wetter. As a result, the prairies are likely to face more frequent and severe droughts of the type that have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses in the mid-1980’s. At the same time, climate warming would likely cause the Great Lakes to drop (over the next few decades) by as much as one meter because of greater evaporation with all the attendant losses to hydro power, shipping and largely competing demands for available water—lakes in northwestern Ontario are already three degrees warmer than they were twenty years ago and are ice-free for some 15 days more each year (Keating, 1989). While water levels are predicted to fall in the interior of Canada, they will rise on the sea coasts. With a 250,000 km coastline (the world’s longest) that ranges through widely varying environments and three bounding oceans, Canada may be one of the countries at greatest risk. If current global warming forecasts prove accurate, and temperatures keep rising, the polar ice caps will gradually melt and Canada’s surrounding oceanic waters could potentially rise (perhaps by as much as 5-7 cm each year). The ice barriers of the Arctic will melt back, opening the Northwestern Passage to commercial and military navigation (thus testing Canada’s claim to sovereignty over the waters of the Canadian Arctic archipelago). Weather in Canada will likely become more extreme, leading to more storms with more powerful winds. On the Atlantic coast, storm-driven waves and high tides are already causing extensive flooding and property damage. Storm tracks will likely shift, meaning that new areas will be at risk. Depending on the extent of local development, this could result in further property destruction and disrupt transportation networks and municipal services. Knowledge of the climatic changes, especially of the Arctic Ocean, is however, more than of regional importance to Canada. The country’s vast extent (-7% of the Earth’s land surface), critical high latitude position, and dominant role in the global climate of the past ensure that the Canadian landmass and the arctic regions in particular will attract considerable attention within Global Change related programs (e.g. the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP), and future programs such as Eos). For instance, it would be impossible to model former global changes without understanding the glacial/postglacial history of the Laurentide ice sheet. In addition, existing climatic models suggest that the greatest impact of potential global warming will occur first and be most dramatically detected in higher latitudes. Hence understanding the critical role Canada’s environment and particularly of the Canadian Arctic is vital to future climatic scenarios and in determining the global climate and ocean circulation systems. GEODETIC SATELLITES TO IMPLEMENT THE EARTH OBSERVING STRATEGY The only way to evaluate the effects of global change, not only in Canada but also at a global scale, is to try to model the interactions of the processes involved, both now and in the past, while maintaining an information system in which long-term and short-term observational records are obtained routinely, maintained and interpreted. Unequivocal documentation of change is needed to provide state variables for prediction models and to establish the hard evidence on which difficult decisions must be based. In this context, geodetic and remote sensing satellites will have a prominent role to play in the various pre-Eos and Eos planned programs. Altimeter-carrying satellites in particular will provide important data for the monitoring of the oceans and the coupling of the ocean and the atmosphere, all of which are essential for the understanding of the dynamics of the ocean circulation, the role of the oceans in the climate, and the refinements of the Earth’s gravitational field models. TOPEXIPoseidon will be a dedicated altimetry mission planned for a 1994 time frame launch, offering the highest achievable accuracy and precision (~1 cm) over most wavelengths of interest, in an orbit specifically chosen to produce optimum results for oceanographic experiments. An earlier mission, with the European Space Agency’s ERS-1 satellite (planned for an early 1991 launch), is primarily oriented towards ice and ocean monitoring with, in addition, all-weather high resolution microwave imaging capabilities over land and coastal zones. To fulfill the measurement objectives of the mission, ERS-1 will carry instrumentation consisting of a core set of sensors (i.e. a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and a wave and wind Scatterometer, and a nadir-pointing Radar Altimeter) supported by additional complementary instruments (i.e. an Along Track Scanning Radiometer and Microwave Sounder, and Presice Range and Range-rate Equipment, PRARE) providing in general all-weather, day and night, high accuracy observations. With a planned minimum temporal overlap with TOPEX of one year, ERS-1 will extend orbital coverage to the highest achievable latitudes (-82°) to give coverage of the near-polar regions. In addition, adequate plans exist to date, in NASA’s Geopotential REsearch Mission (GREM) and ESA’s ARISTOTELES mission, for a gravity program capable of determining the Earth’s geoid with an absolute accuracy of 2 cm or better down to wavelengths of the order of 100 km which is essential not only for the determination of the time-variable ocean circulation, but also for the accurate determination of the satellite’s orbit. As part of NASA’s and ESA’s multi-mission Earth Observation System (Eos) program, TOPEX-class radar altimeters, combined with the modern practices of precision orbit determination, will provide accurate and precise means of sea surface topography changes over several years. When combined with appropriate in-situ measurements these obervations will permit the determination of a three-dimensional structure of the world oceans. Also proposed for Eos is a Geodynamics Laser Ranging and Altimeter System (GLRS), for rapid measurements of crustal deformation and micro topography mapping of the ocean, land and ice surfaces. In 82 ■V-vv^ - ÜÜr wsiÉi '4.- ■ , ■ ч 4 -Vw' шш ш

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: Proceedings of the Symposium on Global and Environmental Monitoring (Part 1)

Multivolume work

Volume

Chapter

Chapter

Table of contents

Cite and reuse

Volume

Chapter

Image

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation