Wind waves in the North Atlantic from ship navigational radar: SeaVision development and its validation with Spotter wave buoy and WaveWatch III

• Main Authors: Tilinina, Natalia, Ivonin, Dmitry, Gavrikov, Alexander, Sharmar, Vitaly, Gulev, Sergey, Suslov, Alexander, Fadeev, Vladimir, Trofimov, Boris, Bargman, Sergey, Salavatova, Leysan, Koshkina, Vasilisa, Shishkova, Polina, Razorenova, Olga, Sokov, Alexey
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2021-431; https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2021-431/

The global coverage of the observational network of the wind waves is still characterized by the significant gaps in in situ observations. At the same time wind waves play an important role into the Earth’ climate system specifically in the air-sea interaction processes and energy exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere. In this paper we present the SeaVision system for measuring wind waves’ parameters in the open ocean with navigational marine X-band radar and prime data collection from the three research cruises in the North Atlantic (2020 and 2021) and Arctic (2021). Simultaneously with SeaVision observations of the wind waves we were collecting data in the same locations and time with Spotter wave buoy and running WaveWatch III model over our domains. Measurements with SeaVision were quality controlled and validated by comparison with Spotter buoy data and WaveWatch III experiments. Observations of the wind waves with navigational Xband radar are in agreement among these three sources of data, with the best agreement for wave propagation directions. The dataset that supports this paper consists of significant wave height, wave period and wave energy frequency spectrum from both SeaVision and Spotter buoy. Currently the dataset is available through the temporary link ( https://sail.ocean.ru/tilinina2021/ ) while supporting dataset (Tilinina et al., 2021) is in technical processing at PANGAEA repository. The dataset can be used for validation of satellite missions as well as model outputs. One of the major highlights in this study is potential of all ships navigating into the open ocean and equipped with X-band marine radar to participate into the development of another observational network for the wind waves in the open ocean once cheap and independently operating version of the SeaVision (or any other system) is available.