Sea state parameters in highly variable environment of Baltic Sea from satellite radar images

Abstract

In this work, remote sensing Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from TerraSAR-X and Tandem-X (TS-X and TD-X) satellites have been used to estimate total significant wave height and surface wind speed in various areas in the Eastern Baltic Sea to further improve empirical XWAVE_C algorithm and to investigate the wave behaviour and local variability. In total, 91 TS-X StripMap scenes between 2012 and 2016 were processed and analysed. The wave height results from SAR images were compared with collocated in situ buoy measurements from different timeframe and locations. The analysed data include both high and low wind sea. New corrections using local wind speed, simultaneously estimated from the same subscene, were introduced to further improve XWAVE_C wave height estimation for short wave systems dominate in the Baltic Sea. The comparison of SAR-based wave height with measured wave height showed high agreement with correlation r of 0.89.