The methods of satellite oceanography

This book is primarily about the oceanographic applications of remote sensing, and is written to complement the detailed descriptions and discussion of the techniques of satellite oceanography published in the companion volume MTOFS (Robinson, 2004).How ever, it would be unfortunate if a reader new to the whole field were left in complete ignorance of how the data presented in the rest of this book have been acquired.Thi s chapter is therefore provided to give a very basic introduction to the methods of ocean remote sensing.It aims to summarize the essentials of the subject and to provide the minimum knowledge that a university graduate in oceanography ought to have, without going into all the detail that someone working in the fields of satellite oceanography research or applications would need.Thus although it only skims the surface, the reader who needs further information to make an explanation clear, or who is stimulated to find out more about a particular technique, can be confident of being able to do so by consulting MTOFS (Robinson, 2004) where a much fuller set of relevant references will also be found. On the other hand, the reader who is already familiar with Robinson (2004) can safely skip this chapter.