Comparisons of gyre-scale acoustic and direct thermal measurements of heat content in the Pacific Ocean, satellite altimeter measurements of sea surface height, and results from a general circulation model show that only about half of the seasonal and year-to-year changes in sea level are attributable to thermal expansion. Interpreting climate change signals from fluctuations in sea level is th...

Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) summering in the eastern Beaufort Sea in 1983 were measured through aerial stereophotogrammetry. Photos were taken from a turbine Aerocommander 690 with wingtip-mounted, calibrated 35-mm cameras. Photos were measured on an analytical plotter with scale data provided by radar altimeter and focal length of the lenses. Coefficient of variation of known-sized tar...

We present maps of the topographic roughness of the Moon at hectometer and kilometer scales. The maps are derived from range profiles obtained by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. As roughness measures, we used the interquartile range of profile curvature at several baselines, from 115 m to 1.8 km, and plotted these in...

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA have jointly established a guest facility in Flagstaff, Arizona, at which NASA-supported planetary scientists will be able to collect high resolution digital topographic data from a wide variety of stereo images in support of their research objectives. The facility has been established with funding from the NASA Planetary Major Equipment (PME)...

Two years of TOPEX/POSEIDON altimeter data have successfully been used to study the mesoscale field in the Mediterranean and to investigate the seasonal and year-toyear variability of the sea level and eddy statistics in this basin. The mesoscale field described by TOPEX/POSEIDON revealed a strong, but subbasin dependent, seasonal signal. Year-toyear variations are also evident in terms of both...

Observed long-term warming trends in the Southern Ocean have been interpreted as a sign of increased poleward eddy heat transport or of a poleward displacement of the entire Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) frontal system. The two-decade-long record from satellite altimetry is an important source of information for evaluating the mechanisms governing these trends. While several recent studie...

The linear response function technique is used to analyze two 1300-km tracks of SEASAT altimeter data and corresponding bathymetry in the Musician Seamounts region north of Hawaii. Bathymetry and geoid height are highly correlated in the 50to 300-km wavelength range. A predictive filter is developed which can operate on SEASAT altimetry in poorly surveyed oceanic regions to indicate the presenc...

Mapping the mesoscale surface velocity stream function by combining estimates of surface height from satellite altimetry and surface currents from sequential infrared (sea-surface temperature) imagery using optimal interpolation is described. Surface currents are computed from infrared images by the method of maximum crosscorrelations (MCC) and are combined with altimeter sealevel anomaly data ...

M easurements of topography can provide a wealth of information on landscape properties fw managing hydrologic and geologic systems and conserving natural and agricultural resources. This article discusses the application of an airborne laser altimeter to measure topography and other landscape surface properties. The airborne laser altimeter makes 4000 measurements per second with a vertical re...