Background, Acknowledgements

The idea to construct this website was born during the Fourth Pacific Ocean Remote Sensing Conference (PORSEC) which took place in Qingdao, China, from July 28 to 31, 1998. Here it became apparent that many remote sensing scientists who live in the Asian countries are not aware of the wealth of information that is contained in ERS SAR images acquired over the ocean. To make this known to a large community was considered to be of paramount importance for ESA, in particular in view of the future Envisat mission.

At this conference G. Duchossois of ESA proposed to W. Alpers and L. Mitnik to construct a website with exemplary ERS SAR images acquired over tropical and subtropical ocean areas showing typical sea surface manifestations of oceanic and atmospheric phenomena. Later also Prof. Hock Lim, who is the Director of the Center for Remote Imaging and Processing (CRISP) at the National University of Singapore and Prof. Kun Shan Chen, who is the Director of the Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory at the Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research at the National Central University at Chung-Li, Taiwan, agreed to join this project.

We thank many colleagues who have given us valuable advice in preparing this website. In particular our thanks go to Dr. Gordon Campbell of ESRIN for his continuous advice and assistance in creating this website. One of us (W. A.) would also like to thank Mrs. Eva-Maria Hongsernant of the International Bureau of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), who made the stay of W. Alpers in Qingdao possible within the framework of the German-Chinese cooperation project in marine science and technology.

Technical assistance for this website has been provided by a team of students working at the Institute of Oceanography in Hamburg, by Vyacheslav Dubina, research scientist of the Pacific Oceanological Institute, Vladivostok and by Chih-Tien Wang, research scientist of the Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research, Taiwan.