Abstract
With the launch of altimeter, much effort has been made to develop algorithms on the wind speed and the wave period. By using a large data set of collocated altimeter and buoy measurements, the typical wind speed and wave period algorithms are validated. Based on theoretical argument and the concept of wave age, a semi-empirical algorithm for the wave period is also proposed, which has the wave-period dimension, and explicitly demonstrates the relationships between the wave period and the other variables. It is found that Ku and C band data should be applied simultaneously in order to improve either wind speed or wave period algorithms. The dual-band algorithms proposed by Chen et al. (2002) for the wind speed and Quilfen et al. (2004) for the wave period perform best in terms of a root mean square error in the practical applications.
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Foundation item: The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 41076007 and 40676014; the National Basic Research Program of China under contract No. 2009CB421201; the Program of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities of China under contract No. B07036.
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Zhao, D., Li, S. & Song, C. The comparison of altimeter retrieval algorithms of the wind speed and the wave period. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 31, 1–9 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-012-0201-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-012-0201-4