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Swell dissipation from 10 years of Envisat advanced synthetic aperture radar in wave mode
Author(s) -
Stopa Justin E.,
Ardhuin Fabrice,
Husson Romain,
Jiang Haoyu,
Chapron Bertrand,
Collard Fabrice
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2015gl067566
Subject(s) - swell , dissipation , synthetic aperture radar , geology , wind wave , storm , meteorology , significant wave height , radar , interferometric synthetic aperture radar , geodesy , remote sensing , physics , telecommunications , engineering , oceanography , thermodynamics
Abstract Swells are found in all oceans and strongly influence the wave climate and air‐sea processes. The poorly known swell dissipation is the largest source of error in wave forecasts and hindcasts. We use synthetic aperture radar data to identify swell sources and trajectories, allowing a statistically significant estimation of swell dissipation. We mined the entire Envisat mission 2003–2012 to find suitable storms with swells (13 < T < 18 s) that are observed several times along their propagation. This database of swell events provides a comprehensive view of swell extending previous efforts. The analysis reveals that swell dissipation weakly correlates with the wave steepness, wind speed, orbital wave velocity, and the relative direction of wind and waves. Although several negative dissipation rates are found, there are uncertainties in the synthetic aperture radar‐derived swell heights and dissipation rates. An acceptable range of the swell dissipation rate is −0.1 to 6 × 10 −7 m −1 with a median of 1 × 10 −7 m −1 .