Journal of Undergraduate Research
Keywords
Near Coastal Winds for Everyone: Targeting Near Coastal Regions for Special Wind Retrieval Processing
College
Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology
Department
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Abstract
Microwave scatterometers, which use radar backscatter measurements from satellites to infer wind vectors near the ocean’s surface, have the ability to monitor global wind speeds at high resolutions. Such data is used for weather forecasting and climate research. However, scatterometer observations over the ocean can be contaminated by land proximity. Consequently, current methods do not use measurements within 30 km of the coast (about 10.6 million square kilometers worldwide) in the data set. This unused data can be utilized by a recently developed algorithm that can measure winds as close as 5 km to the coast (Owen and Long, 2009). Here the author shows that areas near land can be systematically targeted for special processing using information from L2B files, providing valuable near coastal wind data. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the targeting method on a global scale, a sample 4-day data set is processed.
Recommended Citation
Minor, Forrest and Long, Dr. David
(2014)
"Near Coastal Winds for Everyone: Targeting Near Coastal Regions for Special Wind Retrieval Processing,"
Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 2014:
Iss.
1, Article 89.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jur/vol2014/iss1/89