Influence of Sea Surface Current on Wave Height Inversion in Shadow Statistical Method

Abstract

Currently, the research on the inversion of wave height by using the shadow statistical method attracts more attention, due to the benefit of without external calibration equipment. Under the assumption of the sea wave satisfying the ideal first-order dispersion relation, the wave period is used to describe the relationship between wave slope and significant wave height. However, the influence of the sea surface current is ignored during the process of extracting the wave height, since the ideal first-order dispersion relation is adopted. By deeply investigating the theoretical derivation process, the retrieving accuracy of wave height is deteriorated when the surface current exists. To solve this problem of the shadow statistical method, the influence of the surface current on the wave height inversion is investigated and is considered in the first-order dispersion relation for retrieving significant wave height in this paper. The synthetic and the collected X-band marine radar images are utilized to certify the influence of sea surface current on the inversion of the significant wave height. The experimental results demonstrate that the inversion accuracy of the significant wave height can be improved when the influence of the surface current is taken into account.