Estimation of sea surface currents based on ocean colour remote-sensing image analysis

Accurate quantification of the sea surface current speeds with high spatial resolution and in near real-time is beneficial for many applications of physical oceanography, and can be implemented by processing ocean colour remote-sensing imagery data. The robust optical flow (ROF) approach applied to sub-image processing is described in detail in this article, and compared with a conventional maximum cross-correlation (MCC) block matching algorithm with sub-pixel operation. ROF results obtained from Geostationary Ocean Colour Imager (GOCI) imagery are shown to be in good agreement with sea surface currents derived from Ocean Surface Current Analyses-Real time (OSCAR) data, providing a validation of the ROF method.