Analysis of SARAL/AltiKa Wind and Wave over Indian Ocean and its Real-time Application in Wave Forecasting System at ISRO

The current study aims to analyze the wind and wave parameters over Indian Ocean region obtained from first Ka –band altimeter AltiKa onboard SARAL, a collaborative mission of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France. It also demonstrates a real time application of SARAL data by assimilating the wave height in a wave model operational at the Space Applications Centre, ISRO. State-of–the art coastal wave model Simulating Wave Near shore (SWAN) is used for this purpose. The well-tested optimal interpolation technique is adopted for assimilation. Before proceeding to the assimilation per se, SARAL/AltiKa Wind and Significant Wave Height (SWH) have been validated using in- situ observations and WAVEWATCH III model. Apart from assessment of wind and wave data quality, this also served the purpose of providing error covariance to be used in assimilation. Supremacy of the assimilation run over parallel control run without assimilation has been judged by comparing the results with buoy observations at Indian National Centre for Ocean Information System (INCOIS). The statistics of validation of the assimilation run has been found to be extremely encouraging and interesting.