SAR observations of wave growth under fetch-limited conditions

Inhalt:
In this work we investigate wave growth under fetch-limited conditions via the analysis of synthetic aperture radar imagery acquired over the Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Tropical Pacific by the TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X platforms. Extending the work of [1] we found that SAR-derived wavelengths and wave propagation direction compare very well to hindcast results from the IOWAGA database [2], especially to their implementation forced with ECMWF winds. Comparison of SAR-derived wavelengths to the model results modified by the spatial-temporal conversion factor proposed by [3] reduced RMSE by 60% and bias by more than 95%.