The use of COSMO-SkyMed© SAR data for coastal management
Guido Benassai ; Maurizio Migliaccio ; Ferdinando Nunziata ; - ASI Sponsor
Sep - 2015
DOI: 10.1007/s00773-015-0309-2

journal : Journal of Marine Science and Technology

Volume : 20 ; Issue : 3
type: Article Journal

Abstract
In this paper, high spatial resolution wind fields retrieved by the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remotely sensed images are first analyzed to force coastal wind–wave oceanographic models. A very effective technique is here proposed to retrieve wind field by SAR images collected by the Italian Cosmo-SkyMed (CSK) constellation. The technique is first calibrated using a large data set of CSK SAR data and then applied to a meaningful set of CSK SAR data collected during three storms occurred in the Southern Thyrrenian Sea area during the winter season of 2010. CSK SAR winds are used to force SWAN wave numerical simulations to retrieve meaningful wave parameters (e.g., significant wave height, wave directions and periods) as physical descriptors of storm events. Experimental results, undertaken using both CSK and conventional ECMWF wind forcing, buoys and scatterometer winds, demonstrate that CSK winds can be successfully used to predict wave parameters during storm events. The best results are obtained when CSK winds are merged with ECMWF ones to generate a new “blended” wind product.

keywords : SWAN model Numerical simulations X-band COSMO-SkyMed SAR data

Notes : COSMO-SkyMed SAR data used in thisstudy are provided by Italian Space Agency under the scientific re-search project entitled ‘‘Improvement of Oceanic Modelling forCoastal Management by means of COSMO-SkyMedÓ SAR data’’(Project ID 1500). The project, funded by Italian Space Agency (ASI)aims at using SAR-derived wind fields to force surface wave modelsin a coastal environment, and to validate them with wind data setsprovided by scatterometer and wave data set provided by in situ wavebuoys.