Island wake impact on evaporation duct height and sea clutter in the lee of Kauai

Perturbed flow over and around an island can produce leeside vortices and a long wake region of reduced wind speed and altered thermodynamic structure that impacts the evaporation duct height field and directional wave spectra, both of which impact radar sea clutter returns. In this paper, predicted radar clutter is constructed by using evaporation duct height and wind fields from a mesoscale model along with appropriate sea clutter and electromagnetic propagation models. This predicted radar clutter is compared to shipboard observations of radar clutter taken off the leeward slide of Kauai, in December 1999.