Abstract
Stereo imaging of the sea surface elevation provides unique field data to investigate the geometry and dynamics of oceanic waves. Typically, this technique allows retrieving the 4-D ocean topography (3-D space + time) at high frequency (up to 15–20 Hz) over a sea surface region of area ~104 m2. Stereo data fill the existing wide gap between sea surface elevation time-measurements, like the local observation provided by wave-buoys, and large-scale ocean observations by satellites. The analysis of stereo images provides a direct measurement of the wavefield without the need of any linear-wave theory assumption, so it is particularly interesting to investigate the nonlinearities of the surface, wave-current interaction, rogue waves, wave breaking, air-sea interaction, and potentially other processes not explored yet. In this context, this open dataset aims to provide, for the first time, valuable stereo measurements collected in different seas and wave conditions to invite the ocean-wave scientific community to continue exploring these data and to contribute to a better understanding of the nature of the sea surface dynamics.
Highlights
Background & SummaryStereo imaging measurement of the sea surface elevation is based on single snapshots or time records captured by a pair of synchronized and calibrated cameras
In 19885, used a pair of cameras mounted on an oceanographic offshore tower to measure the 3-D sea surface elevation to observe the directional distribution of short-scale ocean waves
In the results presented in this study, the x-axis is set along the cameras supporting bar, and the y-axis points away from the cameras
Summary
Stereo imaging measurement of the sea surface elevation is based on single snapshots or time records captured by a pair of synchronized and calibrated cameras. One of the greatest advantage of having the space-time elevation field ζ(x, y, t) is to compute the 3-D wavenumber/frequency spectrum without the need of invoking any (e.g. linear) wave theory for background noise removal and signal selection This is most important for the short wave components, for which nonlinear contributions are more significant[6,17]. For the first time, we aim at presenting a valuable stereo-image data set, free available for the scientific community This data set contains original records, calibration files, configuration files for processing, and examples of post-processed surface elevation maps collected during several oceanic campaigns, at different locations around the world ocean and under different sea state conditions. All this makes this data set especially useful to explore a common framework to investigate ocean waves and the sea surface dynamics
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