# Super-Resolving Ocean Dynamics from Space with Computer Vision Algorithms
## 3 Results
### Testing Single-Image, Super-Resolution Configurations and Designing a Multi-Scale Adaptive Model
Consistency is not meant here as a perfect alignment between the SST gradients and the geostrophic currents--which is not at all to be expected in non-stationary current fields--but to the impossibility of having so many isotherms being crossed by very large-scale currents, considering the well-developed structures found in the SST field, even assuming a strong chaotic stirring. The dADR-SR prediction also recovers much more reliable patterns associated with the weaker meanders and smaller-scale recirculations in the centre of the sub-basin (C and D) and also the highly asymmetric, strong dipole visible east of Menorca Island (E). Remarkably, it is also capable of identifying the winding north-eastward current close to Corsica (F) that is seen as a rather straight and uniform flow in low-resolution altimetry and completely missed by corresponding AMEDA, while being detected as a small dipole in super-resolved AMEDA contours. The situation looks very different when the original thermal-infrared data are masked by clouds, because in these cases SST data interpolation leads to much smoother SST structures and gradients than what is observed in clear-sky conditions. This filtering unfortunately reflects on the structures retrieved by the dADR-SR model as well, evi  
Figure 6: The dADR-SR prediction from real satellite-derived absolute dynamic topography (ADT) and sea surface temperature data (SST) for one example date (17-07-2016). (**A**) Original altimeter-based surface geostrophic currents (obtained from the ADT gradients); (**B**) super-resolved surface geostrophic currents; (**C**) satellite SST field. The cyan box in (**C**) identifies the area plotted in Figure 7.  
dently dumping surface current intensities and also eventually clearing out several of the mesoscale features. One such example is given in Figure 8, which shows the interpolated SST and the associated nominal interpolation error on the 1 st of July 2014 and the same fields taken three days apart. During these three days, clouds gradually moved into the southwestern Mediterranean from Morocco, completely hiding the sea surface to the satellite infrared radiometers on the second date (Figure 8B,E). The corresponding SST field, presenting very clear and distinct structures on the first day, is dramatically blurred by the interpolation in data-void areas (Figure 9). Similar to the example presented in Figure 7, the dADR-SR reconstruction is able to recover much more consistent surface current patterns in  
Figure 7: Dynamical structures reconstructed by dADR-SR prediction from real satellite-derived absolute dynamic topography (ADT) and sea surface temperature data (SST) (zoomed from Figure 6). (**A**) Original altimeter-based surface geostrophic currents; (**B**) super-resolved surface geostrophic currents; (**C,D**) satellite SST field with overplot of the eddy contours identified through AMEDA detection algorithm (red = cyclonic, blue = anticyclonic, black dots stand for automatically detected eddy centres) applied to original altimeter currents (**C**) and to super-resolved field (**D**). A–F letters serve to more easily locate the dynamical features that are recovered by dADR-SR and missed/misplaced by standard altimetry products (discussed in the text). the presence of clear-sky thermal observations, e.g., aligning the currents to the true shape/position of the jet found close to 6\({}^{\circ}\)E (Figure 9G) along the Algerian coast. This jet is actually feeding a mushroom-like mesoscale structure whose cyclonic eddy is much better retrieved in the super-resolved image and significantly misplaced by the standard product (Figure 9E). Likewise, SR fields also reconstruct the small-scale features observed in the Almeria-Oran front region (i.e., to the north of the SST front found around the Greenwich meridian), which is seen as a unique and quite large cyclone in altimetry maps (consistent with what was noticed by [35]).