Modeling of Coastal Upwelling Using Spatiogram and Structuring Elements

Upwelling is an oceanographic phenomenon where themass of water from the sea floor, cold temperature and nutrientrich, moving up to the sea surface. Upwelling could be happeneddue to the interaction between the surface water with the wind,ocean currents, Ekman transport, and the Coriolis force, so there isa special characteristic of the upwelling waters. Nevertheless, acommon indicator of upwelling is the sea surface temperature(SST) lower than the surrounding areas, high concentrations ofchlorophyll-a, as well as high salinity and density. In coastalupwelling, a lower temperature will be detected near the coast,while warmer temperatures towards offshore. This condition leadsto form unique patterns contour of sea surface temperature. Byusing the data of SST derived from satellites, SST can berepresented with the color and/or contour. Each color pixel valuerepresents a particular SST. The initial phase of this research is todevelop a model for the identification of upwelling based on thepixel and contour patterns. By using sea surface temperature data,the average SST (each month) were analyzed and generate contourlines. Contour lines are formed from the pixels that have the sametemperature value. By calculating the distance between pixels in thesame temperature class and the distance to the surrounding pixels,we have been developing a model for the detection of upwelling.