Recorded presentation8.3
Marine wind analysis with the benefit of Radarsat-1 synthetic aperture radar data
Richard E. Danielson, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada; and M. Dowd and H. Ritchie
A nonlinear regression approach is employed to assess improvements in operational surface marine wind forecasts when synthetic aperture radar (SAR) measurements are also available. High-resolution analyses are constructed for coastal regions of eastern and western North America using a 2D-variational cost function, which includes terms related to wind speed (backscatter strength) and local wind streak direction (backscatter gradient). The cost function simultaneously minimizes differences between the analyses and both the wind forecasts and SAR information. The error covariance matrices that define the cost function are tuned using an independent set of buoy observations, which permit improvements in the resulting wind fields to be estimated. Comparisons are made with conventional methods of combining SAR and model data.
Session 8, Applications of satellite ocean vector winds to air-sea interaction processes (Part I)
Wednesday, 22 August 2007, 8:30 AM-10:00 AM, Broadway-Weidler-Halsey
Previous paper Next paper