A Review of Ocean/Sea Subsurface Water Temperature Studies from Remote Sensing and Non-Remote Sensing Methods

Oceans/Seas are important components of Earth that are affected by global warming and climate change. Recent studies have indicated that the deeper oceans are responsible for climate variability by changing the Earth’s ecosystem; therefore, assessing them has become more important. Remote sensing can provide sea surface data at high spatial/temporal resolution and with large spatial coverage, which allows for remarkable discoveries in the ocean sciences. The deep layers of the ocean/sea, however, cannot be directly detected by satellite remote sensors. Therefore, researchers have examined the relationships between salinity, height, and temperature of the oceans/Seas to estimate their subsurface water temperature using dynamical models and model-based data assimilation (numerical based and statistical) approaches, which simulate these parameters by employing remotely sensed data and in situ measurements. Due to the requirements of comprehensive perception and the importance of global warming in decision making and scientific studies, this review provides comprehensive information on the methods that are used to estimate ocean/sea subsurface water temperature from remotely and non-remotely sensed data. To clarify the subsurface processes, the challenges, limitations, and perspectives of the existing methods are also investigated.