Analysis of Surf Zone Radar Backscatter Measurements
1998
Lyzenga, David R
The long-term goals of this research are to understand the relationship between radar backscatter and wave breaking, especially in shallow water, and to develop remote sensing methods for measuring and monitoring processes related to wave breaking in littoral regions. The short-term objectives of this effort are to establish empirical or semi-empirical relationships between the radar backscatter and breaking wave parameters such as wave height and wave energy dissipation rate by comparing backscatter measurements made under a range of conditions with in situ wave measurements. I have begun by examining the backscatter data collected by an airborne radar (the ERIM DCS) over the Field Research Facility at Duck, North Carolina, during a series of flights in May, 1996. I also have begun to examine radar data collected by the ERS satellite. Data from two of the airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images collected on May 7 and 14, 1996, have been analyzed and compared with wave measurements made at the Field Research Facility. Two ERS SAR frames of the Duck area have been acquired and one has been examined to date. I also plan to order ERS images for some West Coast locations, and have reviewed the wave data from several NOAA buoys on the days corresponding to the available ERS images to select an optimal data set for this analysis. Two unexpected results were obtained during the first year of this project. The first result is that the radar backscatter is not proportional to the rate of energy dissipation due to wave breaking, as was initially supposed. The second result is that wave breaking in the surf zone can cause either an increase or a decrease in the radar backscatter, depending (apparently) on wind speed as well as radar parameters such as wavelength, polarization, and incidence angle.
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