IMOS ocean current surface waves product: A tool for up-to-date ocean wave conditions around Australia
Mr Salman Saeed Khan1, Mr Mark Hemer1
1CSIRO
The waves product has been recently added (Mar 2022) to the IMOS OceanCurrent suite of visualisations, delivering up to date information of wave conditions around Australia. The new maps present a combination of near real-time wave information from Australia’s in-situ coastal wave buoy network, several traditional and emerging satellite surface wave measuring platforms (radar altimeter and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) etc.), and the near real-time modelled wave field from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s (BoM) AUSWAVE model. This combined spatial representation of modelled, in-situ, and satellite data complements buoy data time-series available from the State and Commonwealth agencies that operate each buoy.
The maps are created at 2-hourly time steps with t0 as the central time showing the AUSWAVE wave field. Coastal wave buoy operator data and satellite wave observations are included in a t0 +/- 3-hour window. Each operator’s buoy data page can be accessed by clicking on the buoy location on the maps. Monthly videos derived from the maps are also created to have a synoptic record of wave field propagation from ocean to the coast. The maps start from Jan 2021 and are up to date till present.
The product has been made possible thanks to provision of wave data from several sources including State and Commonwealth Government wave buoy custodians, sourced through IMOS AODN National wave buoy data archive, satellite altimeter wave height data from RADS, Sentinel-1 near real time SAR wave data from IMOS AODN, and BoM’s AUSWAVE background wave field. The latency of all these datasets is variable, but usually less than 24 hours.
Biography:
Salman Khan is a Research Scientist at the Climate Science Centre in CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere Business Unit. He is the co-lead scientist of the IMOS Satellite Remote Sensing (SRS) surface waves sub-facility, which maintains a long-term record of satellite-derived ocean surface wave and wind measurements from past, operational, and forthcoming satellite missions.
