KLIWAS 
Seite 9 
1 Ab stra c t 
The KLIWAS climatology of sea surface temperature (SST) and ocean colour (OC) 
fronts in the North Sea was established by a co-operation of the Federal Maritime and 
Hydrographic Agency (BSH) and Brockmann Consult (BC) in order to generate a 
reliable reference data set for the assessment of changes in frontal position, gradients, 
and seasonal variability due to climate change on the basis satellite data. 
Frontal zones are relative sharp boundaries between different water masses and can 
be identified by feature extraction and classification of satellite data from different 
sensors providing information about the SST and OC i.e. chlorophyll or suspended 
matter concentration. While frontal zones can be identified directly from SST, water 
quality parameters such as chlorophyll concentration can be a proxy for a frontal 
zone, but not every strong OC gradient is mandatory an oceanic front. More than two 
decades of satellite data have been analysed for this climatology referring to type and 
location of frontal zones, horizontal scales (e.g. gradients perpendicular to the front), 
and sensor characteristics like spatial resolution and noise. 
This report consists of three parts: 
Part A describes background, methods, data, the new algorithms, and the data access 
via ftp. The data are freely available for everyone. 
Part B (this document) presents a selection of SST products, and 
Part C presents a selection of OC products. 
KLIWAS 
Climatology 
of North Sea 
Fronts