Deriving L-Band Tilting Ocean Surface Roughness From Measurements by Operational Systems

Waves much shorter than those measured by operational systems make significant contribution to the ocean surface roughness. This article describes a method to obtain the L-band tilting ocean surface roughness using wind speed and windsea dominant wave period coupled with a wind-wave spectrum model. Examples are presented with wind and dominant wave data from ocean buoys and hurricane hunters. Several related issues are discussed: high-frequency wave spectrum, integration limit, swell contribution, and measurements in extreme winds: 1) it is well known since the 1970s that with stationary sensors, extending the frequency range in measuring elevation spectrum does not yield useful short-wave information because of the low signal level and large Doppler frequency shift involved in measuring short waves. 2) Low-pass mean square slopes (LPMSSs) integrated to 5 and 11 rad/m are computed to quantify their difference as a function of wind speed and inverse wave age (IWA). The normalized difference decreases with increasing wind speed and decreasing IWA. 3) Swell contribution to the L-band LPMSS is almost negligible for wind speed greater than 5 m/s (less than 5% in 99% of observations). In low-wind conditions (wind speed less than 5 m/s), the swell contribution is difficult to assess because of inaccuracy in identifying the weak windsea system. 4) The coarse resolution in National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) wave spectra causes large data scatter in the computed LPMSS in very high winds (greater than 20 m/s). A mitigating solution is offered.