| High-resolution satellite images of the ocean surface in and around the sunglint often provide unique observations of sub-mesoscale upper ocean surface processes. Local anomalies of wind, waves, currents or surfactants appear on the images as local anomalies of brightness. A quantitative interpretation of those brightness anomalies must relate them to slope properties of the wave field, which are to the lowest order described by the mean square slope (mss). The prevailing paradigm for such interpretation is that of the critical zenith angle. It states that, for sub-critical zenith view angle, brightness and mss anomalies have opposite signs, and this defines the so-called inversion region. This prevailing paradigm implicitly builds on the assumption that... |
