Análise da variabilidade de altura dinâmica do oceano e comparações entre velocidades geostróficas obtidas a partir de dados altimétricos e derivadores de superfície na Bacia de Campos – Brasil

Abstract

The Campos Basin – Brazil – has nowadays the biggest oil production sites of the country. It means that the offshore activities related to the oil are very intense, like transport and oil production. With this intense oil transportation the spills are unavoidable. In some developed countries operacional oceanography programs have been useful to avoid accidents or reduce their environmental impacts. However, they demand great spatial coverage and real-time data distribution.The satellite altimetry is a good way to attend this demand. In this labor the feasibility of satellite altimetry employment for surface velocities monitoring is analysed in the study area. The analysis was based in the comparison between geostrophic velocities obtained from altimeter data and surface drifters velocities. For this, it was made a linear correlation between the measurements , obtaining correlation coefficients of ~0.66 for the meridional component and ~0.45 for the zonal one. Even being small coefficients the results are encouraging. Specially considering that the geotrophic velocities are simplifications of the reality and the optimal interpolation erros in drifter data and sea surface height maps.