Extraction of Ocean Fronts Based on Empirical Mode Decomposition

Ocean front is a narrow transitional zone that the penetration of sea is obviously different between two or more waters there. It is an important feature of geophysical turbulence which plays an important role in ocean dynamics. Ocean fronts become visible on radar images because they are associated with a variable surface current which modulates the sea surface roughness and thus the backscattered radar power. This paper propose a new integrated method to extract ocean fronts based on two-dimensional Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), image edge detection and mathematical morphology processing. Experimental results show that this integrated method can be effective in ocean front feature extraction.