Surface waves in arctic seas, observed from TerraSAR-X

The need for wide-spread, up-to-date sea state observations in the emerging ice-free Arctic will further increase as the region will open up to marine operations. Here we present an example of spatial wave field parameters obtained from a TerraSAR-X StripMap swath in the southern Beaufort Sea. Significant wave heights varied from <; 1m to > 2.2m over distances of less than 50km. These results are compared to current state-of-the-art implementation of spectral wave prediction models. Overall, good agreement is observed, and limitations of the remote sensing algorithm and the wave model are highlighted.