| Summary: | Taking advantage of recent easy near real time access to SAR-imagery from ESA, we have set up an automated system to download and process Envisat ASAR images to wind speed maps along the Norwegian coast and in the Barents Sea. The wind speed is calculated with the CMOD4-algorithm, taking wind direction input from the 0.5 degree resolution model of the Global Forecasting System (GFS) of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The system has been running stably for nearly one year, providing wind fields at 500 m resolution as quickly as 3-9 hours after satellite acquisition. A wide range of atmospheric boundary layer wind features have been observed. An offshore wind front observed with ASAR is nicely reproduced by the mesoscale model MM5 with 9 km horizontal resolution. By reducing the horisontal resolution to 1 km, MM5 is also able to reproduce the SAR-observed wind jets coming out the fjords in Northern Norway. 1.
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