Detection of Cold Water Mass along the East Coast of Korea Using Satellite Sea Surface Temperature Products

This study proposes the detection algorithm for the cold water mass (CWM) along the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula using sea surface temperature (SST) data provided by the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST). Considering the occurrence and distribution of the CWM, the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula is classified into 3 regions ("Goseong-Uljin", "Samcheok-Guryongpo", "Pohang-Gijang"), and the K-means clustering is first applied to SST field of each region. Three groups, K means clusters are used to determine CWM through applying a double threshold filter predetermined using the standard deviation and the difference of average SST for the 3 groups. The estimated sea area is judged by the CWM if the standard deviation in the sea area is 0.6 degrees C or higher and the average water temperature difference is 2 degrees C or higher. As a result of the CWM detection in 2022, the number of CWM occurrences in "Pohang-Gijang" was the most frequent on 77 days and performance indicators of the confusion matrix were calculated for quantitative evaluation. The accuracy of the three regions was 0.83 or higher, and the F1 score recorded a maximum of 0.95 in "Pohang-Gijang". The detection algorithm proposed in this study has been applied to the KIOST SST system providing a CWM map by email.