Bathymetric effects on a tropical cyclone wave field at landfall

Author

Wright, C.W. ; Walsh, E.J. ; Vandemark, D. ; Krabill, William B.

Author_Institution

Wallops Flight Facility, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Wallops Island, VA

Volume

3

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

1237

Abstract

On 26 August 1998, the NASA Scanning Radar Altimeter (SRA) flew on a NOAA hurricane research aircraft to document the directional wave spectrum as Hurricane Bonnie was making landfall near Wilmington, NC, SRA measurements in deep ocean two days earlier provided a basis of comparison for the bathymetric effects at landfall. The open ocean wave heights indicated that Hurricane Bonnie would have produced waves of 11 m height on the shore had there not been wave damping by the continental shelf. The bathymetry distributed the dissipation process across the shelf so that wavelength and height were reduced gradually. The wave height 5 km from shore was about 4 m

Keywords

airborne radar; bathymetry; ocean waves; oceanographic regions; remote sensing by radar; storms; Atlantic Ocean; Hurricane Bonnie; NASA Scanning Radar Altimeter data; SRA-measurements; Wilmington; bathymetric effects; continental shelf; directional wave spectrum; dissipation process; landfall; open ocean wave heights; tropical cyclone wave field; Airborne radar; Aircraft; Damping; Hurricanes; NASA; Ocean waves; Oceanographic techniques; Radar measurements; Sea measurements; Tropical cyclones;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2001. IGARSS '01. IEEE 2001 International

Conference_Location

Sydney, NSW

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7031-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2001.976804

Filename

976804