Ambient and breaking roughness of the ocean surface

Author

Hwang, Paul A.

Author_Institution

Oceanogr. Div., Stennis Space Center, MS, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2002

fDate

2002

Firstpage

937

Abstract

Local wind-generated surface roughness can be decomposed into ambient component, surface wave geometric contribution (the mean square slope) and breaking wave contribution (the breaking roughness). Only the last two components can be attributed to local wind condition for remote sensing considerations. The ambient roughness level is estimated to be between 0.01 and 0.02 from altimeter data. The rate of increase of breaking roughness with wind speed is much faster than the counterpart of the mean square slope of wave geometry. In high wind conditions, breaking roughness contribution may exceed the wind-wave geometrical contribution. The data of Cox and Munk (1954) collected in clean and slick conditions, and newer data of filtered surface roughness derived from spaceborne altimeter are analyzed to provide a quantitative description of the breaking roughness.

Keywords

backscatter; ocean waves; oceanographic techniques; radar cross-sections; remote sensing by radar; spaceborne radar; ambient roughness; backscatter; breaking roughness; breaking wave; measurement technique; ocean wave; radar remote sensing; radar scattering; rough surface; roughness; sea surface; spaceborne radar; wave geometry; Character generation; Oceans; Rough surfaces; Sea measurements; Sea surface; Surface acoustic waves; Surface cleaning; Surface roughness; Surface waves; Wind speed;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2002. IGARSS '02. 2002 IEEE International

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7536-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2002.1025735

Filename

1025735