An Estimate of the Decay rate of Swells using Altimeter Data

The decay rate of swells is an important factor in swell propagation. Munk[1] and Snodgrass[2] used buoy observation data along the U.S. Coast to study the swells generated by Pacific storms. Recently, people have begun to use satellite data to study the law of wave attenuation in the oceans. The decay rate of storm generated swells in the Pacific Ocean was estimated by analyzing the synthetic aperture radar data in the west coast of America[3]. By using altimeter data, Young and Babanin et al. [4] analyzed such decay rate in the Southern Ocean, and Wang et al. [5] studied the attenuation law of Pacific swells. The magnitude of the swell decay rate of these studies is close but the values are quite different.