Sea-state observing and modelling remain major issues as well for marine forecast (security of goods and people) as for the progress of science on ocean/atmosphere coupled system.
For many years, Météo-France is developing collaboration with the CNRS/LATMOS using the airborne facilities of SAFIRE. A radar named KuROS has been designed by LATMOS in 2012 in order to be installed on-board the ATR42. There are many goals to it:
- preparation of the space mission CFOSAT, dedicated to the global observation of ocean surface winds and waves by radar,
- study of the wind and wave fields, of the wind/waves and wind/current coupling, and validation of the MFWAM Météo-France numerical wave forecast model,
- upstream work about the surface current measurement by radar.
These activities are also based on collaboration between the marine and oceanographic department of Météo-France and the CNRS/LATMOS. Since 2013, KuROS has been operated on the ATR42 at many times. The sea-state in conditions of strong sea-state (Mistral and Tramontane winds) has been collected during fifteen flights performed as part of the HYMEX campaign in winter 2013 over the Gulf of Lion (Mediterranean Sea). Situations of strong wave/current interactions were encountered during seven flights over the Iroise Sea carried out during oceanographic campaigns PROTEVS (SHOM, 2013), and BBWAVES (October 2015). All of these campaigns permitted to harvest interesting data, which are being analysed. The radar data and associated data processing methods were validated in 2014 (Caudal et al, 2014). Work combining observation of wave spectra by KuROS and MFWAM wave prediction model outputs is under progress (figures …). Beyond the ongoing analysis, which will serve the goals mentioned above, the project is to complete the dataset by new flights over the Iroise Sea in 2016 before an implementation of KuROS over the Bay of Biscaye during the validation period of the CFOSAT satellite after its launching in 2018.
