Temporal variation in Korean coastal waters using Geostationary Ocean Color Imager

Abstract

Ryu, J. H., Choi, J. K., Eom, J. and Ahn, J. H., 2011. Temporal and daily variation in the Korean coastal waters by using Geostationary Ocean Color Imager. Journal of Coastal Research, SI 64 (Proceedings of the 11th International Coastal Symposium), 1731 - 1735. Szczecin, Poland, ISSN 0749-0208 Temporal variations of suspended sediment (SS) concentration in coastal water are the key to understanding the pattern of sediment movement in semidiurnal tides such as those on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula. An advantage of Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI), the world's first geostationary ocean color observation satellite, over other ocean color satellite images is that it can obtain data every hour during the day and makes it possible to monitor the ocean in real time. Here, we qualitatively investigate daily variation in turbidity on the sea surface in a coastal region. Nineteen water samples were collected from the coast to the open sea in southern Gyeonggi Bay, located on the west coast of Korea, for the estimation of SS concentration. GOCI images acquired on the same day as the samples were used to generate water-leaving radiance images, and to estimate the difference in turbidity displayed in each image. Temporal variations in turbidity were successfully identified from the GOCI images acquired at hourly intervals and the L-w derived from the images showed a close agreement with in-situ measurements. GOCI can be effectively applied to monitoring the temporal dynamics of turbidity on coastal water surfaces and consequently the sediment movement, according to the tidal cycle, can be estimated on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula.