Benassai G, Migliaccio M., Montuori A., 2013. Sea wave numerical simulations with Cosmo-SkyMed SAR data.

In this paper, X-band COSMO-SkyMed© Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data are first experimented as wind field forcing of coastal wind-wave oceanographic modeling for sea-wave numerical simulation. The SWAN wave numerical simulations run with Cosmo-SkyMed SAR wind data were performed with respect to some relevant wave storms in the Southern Thyrrenian Sea area during the winter season of 2010. The wind forcing is provided by X-band COSMO-SkyMed© SAR-based wind field estimations which are properly blended with both buoys wave data and ECMWF model winds to retrieve meaningful wave parameters (e.g. significant wave height, wave directions and periods) as physical descriptors of storm events. Experimental results accomplished with X-band COSMO-SkyMed© SAR-based wind field forcing are successfully compared with the ones gathered by using both buoys wave field data and ECMWF model winds, only. The results obtained with the use of blended COSMO-SkyMed©-ECMWF data are satisfactory in terms of sea storm reconstruction, so this source of data can be used also for coastal management purposes.