Wave characteristics analysis of the northwest pacific ocean based on wave parameters retrieved from envisat/ASAR

Abstract Ocean wave is an important dynamic process occurring at the air-sea interface. In the past few decades, wave frequency spectrum has been widely studied. However, the difficulty in obtaining high quality observational data leads to the lack of research on wave direction spectrum. In this study, 146,000+ optimal wave directional spectra data were obtained from Envisat/ASAR (Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar) data of the Northwest Pacific from Jan. 2003 to Jan. 2012. We compared the SWH (Significant Wave Height) data obtained from the optimal wave directional spectrum and the third wave prediction model— WAM with the measured SWH data from buoys respectively. The results show that when the SWH data is larger than 4m, the retrieval error accuracy obtained from Envisat/ASAR increases about 12.9% when the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium Term Weather Forecasting) wind data is used to drive WAM, while when the NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) wind data is used, the accuracy of the retrieval error increased by 36.5%. The retrieved SWH data are statistically analyzed in order to find the spatiotemporal characteristics. The results are of great significance to the study of sea wave disaster.