The Grand Banks ERS‐1 SAR wave experiment

The European Space Agency's Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-1) was launched in July 1991 [Attema and Francis, 1991]. As part of a global program to validate the ocean surface sensors on board ERS-1, we carried out a joint experiment in November 1991 on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland involving ships, moorings, aircraft, and a land-based radar. The principal objective was to provide a field validation of ERS-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) [Attema, 1991] measurements of ocean surface structure. Other objectives included the testing of numerical wave prediction models, the validation of both shipborne X-band and shorebased HF marine wave radars, and an investigation of the relation between sea state and wind stress. The experiment included a large number of independent wave, sea surface, and atmospheric sensors (Table 1).