The European satellites Sentinel-1A and -1B acquire synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of coastal regions of the U.S. on a regular basis, and they can be programmed to acquire additional images at times of hurricanes and similar events of interest. The European Space Agency makes all Sentinel-1 imagery available to interested users in near real time, free of charge. Together with the radar intensity images, derived wind fields are provided.
To give the project partners an idea of the coverage and quality of these products, we downloaded three images of Hurricane Michael (2018) over the Gulf of Mexico, acquired 2018-10-08 23:50 UTC, 2018-10-09 23:43 UTC, and 2018-10-10 11:49 UTC, and we converted the radar intensity images and wind fields to KMZ files for viewing in Google Earth. The animated GIF on this web page shows these products and zooms into the October 10 wind field to resolve the white wind direction arrows.
Task 3B met our project objectives to rapidly deploy water level and wave sensors in cross-shore transects, spanning offshore to inland, to collect data for model validation, following a short but effective timeline.
by Martha Schönau, Luca Centurioni, Steve Jayne, and Elizabeth Sanabia
Hurricane Ian was the first 2022 hurricane to make landfall in the continental USA with strong Cat 5 winds and large amounts of rain. The team of Deltares USA, Deltares Netherlands, USGS and NRL successfully applied the COSMOS modelling system to forecast hurricane Ian’s flood and morphological impact.
