SAR Observations and WRF Modeling of Marine Atmospheric Phenomena

Abstract

The interaction between ocean/atmosphere physical processes and the short Bragg and intermediate oceanic gravity waves will lead to a change in sea surface roughness, which is one of the key parameters that need to be measured from the space. Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can measure the ocean and ice surface roughness in the microwave band without being hampered by cloud cover and lack of Sun light during nighttime. Modern SAR's are high-spatial-resolution (10 m) and wide-swath (up to 450km) imaging radars that can “view” these sea surface roughness patterns associated with marine atmospheric boundary layer phenomena in great details. In this presentation, dynamical features associated with these phenomena (tropical cyclones, atmospheric vortex streets, atmospheric gravity waves, fronts, katabatic winds) will be presented. The state-of-the-art WRF model can now simulate the atmospheric conditions in a spatial resolution comparable to that of spaceborne SAR. We implemented the nested WRF numerical model with actual meteorological conditions as inputs to simulate the 3D structure and the temporal evolution of some of the marine atmospheric phenomena. The sea surface wind patterns simulated by the WRF model and observed by SAR are compared to cross validate of the model run results.