TY - JOUR T1 - Swell dissipation from 10 years of Envisat ASAR in wave mode A1 - Stopa,Justin A1 - Ardhuin,Fabrice A1 - Husson,Romain A1 - Jiang,Haoyu A1 - Chapron,Bertrand A1 - Collard,Fabrice AD - Univ Brest, CNRS, IRD, IFREMER,LOPS,IUEM, Brest, France. AD - Collecte Localisat Satellites, Plouzane, France. AD - Ocean Univ China, Coll Informat Sci & Engn, Qingdao, Peoples R China. AD - Ocean Data Lab, Plouzane, France. AD - UR - https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00324/43534/ DO - 10.1002/2015GL067566 N2 - 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. Y1 - 2016/04 PB - Amer Geophysical Union JF - Geophysical Research Letters SN - 0094-8276 VL - 43 IS - 7 SP - 3423 EP - 3430 ID - 43534 ER -