Modeling of coastal upwelling using spatiogram and structuring elements

Upwelling is an oceanographic phenomenon where the mass of water from the sea floor, cold temperature and nutrient rich, moving up to the sea surface Upwelling could be happened due to the interaction between the surface water with the wind, ocean currents, Ekman transport, and the Coriolis force, so there is a special characteristic of the upwelling waters. Nevertheless, a common indicator of upwelling is the sea surface temperature (SSI) lower than the surrounding areas, high concentrations of chlorophyll-a, as well as high salinity and density. In coastal upwelling, a lower temperature will be detected near the coast, while warmer temperatures towards offshore. This condition leads to form unique patterns contour of sea surface temperature By using the data of SST derived from satellites, SST can be represented with the color and/or contour. Each color pixel value represents a particular SST. The initial phase of this research is to develop a model for the identification of upwelling based on the pixel and contour patterns. By using sea surface temperature data, the average SST (each month) were analyzed and generate contour lines. Contour lines are formed from the pixels that have the same temperature value. By calculating the distance between pixels in the same temperature class and the distance to the surrounding pixels, we have been developing a model for the detection of upwelling.