Directional Properties of Surface Waves Observed With HF Radar

Abstract : The goal of the work at Sheffield is to demonstrate that wave measurements obtained using HF radars are of sufficient accuracy and availability for them to contribute to the investigation of changes to the directional spectrum of waves subject to meteorological bathymetric and current variability in coastal environments for both scientific and operational applications. This report summarizes the measurements made with the OSCR HF radar in collaboration with the University of Miami, during the SHOWEX experiment in fall 1999 using inversion algorithms developed at the University of Sheffield. The data set obtained contains interesting examples of shoaling waves and fetch limited wave development but the amount of data obtained was limited by the hardware constraints of the OSCR system. Comparisons with directional wave buoys confirmed the results of earlier work that signal-to-noise and antenna sidelobes are the main sources of error in the radar wave measurements.