OSD Ocean Science Discussions OSD Ocean Sci. Discuss. 1812-0822 Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/os-2016-53 Integration between X-Band Radar and Buoy Sea State Monitoring Ludeno Giovanni https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5672-2721 1 Reale Ferdinando 2 Raffa Francesco https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0990-8846 3 Dentale Fabio 2 Soldovieri Francesco 1 Pugliese Carratelli Eugenio 2 Serafino Francesco 4 Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of Environment (IREA), National Research Council (CNR) CUGRI (University Centre for Research on major Hazard) and MEDUS (Maritime Engineering Division University of Salerno) Institute for Coastal Marine Environment (IAMC), National Research Council (CNR) CNR-IBMET (Institute of Biometeorology of National Research Council) 05 09 2016 2016 1 16 Copyright: © 2016 Giovanni Ludeno et al. 2016 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://os.copernicus.org/preprints/os-2016-53/ The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://os.copernicus.org/preprints/os-2016-53/os-2016-53.pdf

The paper presents the results of an integrated buoy and X-Band radar sea state monitoring activity carried out on the southern coast of Sicily. The work involved the integration of buoy and radar data, as well as the simultaneous acquisition of Significant Wave Height (SWH) values from two similar radar sets located at a slight distance from each other – a rare and fortunate circumstance which took place during two storms in the winter 2014–2015. Good consistency and repeatability was reached between the two radars and the reliability of X-Band radar as a wave monitoring system was confirmed by the comparison with the buoy wave meter. A further and important result of the work is the knowledge gained on the short spatial and temporal fluctuations of the sea state: while such Small Scale Storm Variations (SSSV) cannot be easily discriminated from electromagnetic effects and from algorithm artefacts, some important progress has been done towards the identification of this phenomenon. Integration of different sensors is the key to a definite improvement of sea state monitoring for most coastal applications.