Thermal Remote Sensing of Coastal Waters

A full-time PhD project is available at the University of Reading in high-resolution remote sensing of temperature in coastal zones. The project has industrial sponsorship and a focus on assessing the environmental impact of thermal plumes from major coastal installations. The aim is to use remote sensing data to improve our understanding of coastal thermal environments and industrial plumes, working with the energy company EDF to study sites across Europe. Coolant systems in major coastal installations use sea water which is then released back into coastal enviroments at a higher-than-ambient temperature, with differences as great as ~10 degrees. Satellite-based sensors make thermal observations at a spatial resolution of ~100 m to ~1 km, enabling us to identify these coastal features, and providing a unique opportunity to study this problem from space. Remote sensing data will be integrated with hydrodynamic models of coastal/river environments, used to enhance understanding of local flow dynamics and evaluate model performance. Wider applications of the remote snesing techniques apply to natural phenomena including ocean temperature distributions near sea ice, ice-shelves, validating the locations of tidal and estuarine fronts in hydrodynamic models, etc. The project will be jointly supervised at the University of Reading by Prof Chris Merchant and Dr Claire Bulgin, both part of a internationally recognised expert team in sea surface temperature retrievals from space. The student will be affiliated with the National Centre for Earth Observation, enabling additional personal development opportunities through NCEO graduate student events.