Trident Warrior Buoy Testing
Abstract
Our long term goals are to improve our ability to characterize and forecast ocean surface waves. Most all at-sea Naval operations depend on knowledge of the conditions of the sea surface in one form or another. This includes the forecasting of EM/RF propagation near the ocean-surface as sea surface roughness has a profound influence on transmission characteristics. The world s oceans are data poor with respect to in-situ wave observations that are suitable for assimilation into, and verification with, operational global wave models (WAM, WaveWatch III). Data that is routinely available to models are satellite-based and have their own set of challenges. For example, remote sensing of the surface wave field using techniques such as radar altimetry or synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides some measure of bulk wave properties, such as significant wave height or mean wave direction, and can be used to adjust global wave models. However, the techniques suffer from several issues: poor spectral resolution (e.g., differentiating swell vs. seas); the estimation of wave height is dependent on semiempirical models or modulation transfer functions that have inherent errors: and the satellite repeat time over a particular region of the ocean is too long to reliably improve. Global wave models suffer additional challenges as the wind forcing terms are derived from models (COAMPS, NOGAPS) that have their own set of data sparse challenges, and wave-current interactions are typically neglected due to poor measurements of ocean surface currents.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA598020
Entities
People
- Eric Terrill
Organizations
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography