Study on a Heavy Sea Fog Event over the East Sea in May 2015

Abstract

Sea fog is a common weather phenomenon that occurs in the lower layer of the atmosphere over sears or coastal areas. It often interrupts the ship traffics through low visibility, hence sometimes results in accidents. Ground station observation data of sea fog is limited to points. On the contrary, sea fog detection using remote sensing can provide spatial and temporal data coverage over a larger area. Through this study we studied to find out the fog prone period in the East Sea of Korea. From observation of pre-processed Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) data it was found that May have much of heavy sea fog days among the months covered by the study. More study needed to get in depth view with visual observation as well as for development of algorithm for accurate automatic detection of sea fogs using GOCI images in that portion of the ocean.