Swell dissipation from 10 years of Envisat ASAR in wave mode

Type Article
Date 2016-04
Language English
Author(s) Stopa Justin1, Ardhuin FabriceORCID5, Husson Romain2, Jiang Haoyu3, Chapron BertrandORCID1, Collard Fabrice4
Affiliation(s) 1 : Univ Brest, CNRS, IRD, IFREMER,LOPS,IUEM, Brest, France.
2 : Collecte Localisat Satellites, Plouzane, France.
3 : Ocean Univ China, Coll Informat Sci & Engn, Qingdao, Peoples R China.
4 : Ocean Data Lab, Plouzane, France.
Source Geophysical Research Letters (0094-8276) (Amer Geophysical Union), 2016-04 , Vol. 43 , N. 7 , P. 3423-3430
DOI 10.1002/2015GL067566
WOS© Times Cited 30
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.
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