June 7, 2004
Watching Great Lakes Winds from Space
Ann Arbor, Mich. — This study demonstrates the usefulness of satellite scatterometer (radar) measurements to measure winds over the Great Lakes.
An innovative method is used to retrieve high-resolution data on wind speed and direction over the Great Lakes twice per day.
"Monitoring wind fields on a regional scale over the Great Lakes is useful for marine resource management, lake fisheries and ecosystem studies and navigation hazard forecast," according to Son Nghiem, a researcher at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "The data can also be used in hydrodynamic circulation and wave prediction models."
Until now, numerous surface stations measured winds on land along the lakeshore and buoys measured winds at several lake locations during ice-free months, but this new method allows systematic measurement of high-resolution wind fields over all the lakes on a daily basis.
Nghiem and his collaborators used a NASA scatterometer, originally designed for low-resolution wind-vector measurements over oceans, to measure wind vectors over the Great Lakes at a resolution of 12 km. They found that compared to nowcast-modeled winds (based on marine observation data) and lake buoy data, the satellite-based measurements gave consistent measurements for the Great Lakes. Moreover, wind fields measured by satellite before, during, and after a large storm, with strong winds up to 50 knots (~25 m/s), could track the storm's development over the lakes.
Original Publication Information
Results of this study, "Wind Fields Over the Great Lakes Measured by the SeaWinds Scatterometer on the QuikSCAT Satellite," are reported by Son V. Nghiem, George A. Leshkevich, and Bryan W. Stiles in the latest issue (Volume 30, No 1, pp. 148-165) of the Journal of Great Lakes Research, published by the International Association for Great Lakes Research, 2004.
Contacts
For more information about the study, contact Son V. Nghiem, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, MS 300-235, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109; son.v.nghiem@jpl.nasa.gov; (818) 354-2982.
For information about the Journal of Great Lakes Research, contact Marlene Evans, Editor, National Water Research Institute, 11 Innovation Boulevard, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 3H5, Canada; marlene.evans@ec.gc.ca; (306) 975-5310.
Since 1967, IAGLR has served as the focal point for compiling and disseminating multidisciplinary knowledge on North America's Laurentian Great Lakes and other large lakes of the world and their watersheds. In part, IAGLR communicates this knowledge through publication of the Journal of Great Lakes Research, available to members in print and electronic form. A searchable archive of the journal is available online and includes the abstracts of articles from the journal's inception in 1975 through the most recent issue. In addition, complete articles are available to members who have signed up for an electronic subscription.
