Parameterized first-guess spectrum method for retrieving directional spectrum of swell-dominated waves and huge waves from SAR images

Abstract

A method to retrieve ocean wave spectra from SAR images, named Parameterized First-guess Spectrum Method (PFSM), was proposed after interpretation of the theory to ocean wave imaging and analysis of the drawbacks of the retrieving model generally used. In this method, with additional information and satellite parameters, the separating wave-number is first calculated to determine the maximum wave-number beyond which the linear relation can be used. The separating wave-number can be calculated using the additional information on wind velocity and parameters of SAR satellite. And then the SAR spectrum can be divided into SAR spectrum of wind wave and of swell according to the result of separating wave-number. The portion of SAR spectrum generated by wind wave, is used to search for the most suitable parameters of ocean wind wave spectrum, including propagation direction of ocean wave, phase speed of dominating wave and the angle spreading coefficient. The swell spectrum is acquired by directly inversing the linear relation of ocean wave spectrum to SAR spectrum given the portion of SAR spectrum generated by swell. We used the proposed method to retrieve the ocean wave spectrum from ERS-SAR data from the South China Sea and compared the result with altimeter data. The agreement indicates that the PFSM is reliable.