SRL real time wave forecasting in the Southern Ocean

In April and October of 1994, the Space Radar Laboratory (SRL) flew aboard the shuttle Endeavour. An on-board processor built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) used synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signal from the C-band channel to compute SAR images and their corresponding image spectra. These spectra, which sampled much of the Southern Ocean, were transmitted to the ground in real-time. The authors describe the Southern Ocean wave measurement and prediction experiment. They describe the nature of processor-produced-spectra and provide early comparisons with the WAM wave model.