An airborne, real-aperture radar study of the Chesapeake Bay outflow plume

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has recently utilized an airborne, real aperture radar (RAR) to study the fronts associated with the outflow from the Chesapeake Bay. During May 1997, the system was flown near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay as part of the Chesapeake Bay Outflow Plume Experiment (COPE). This paper presents a summary of the RAR operations and of the data collected during the exercise. The plume front positions, as determined from the X-band RAR imagery, are presented for four cases, spanning the full semidiurnal tidal cycle over the course of approximately two weeks.