https://eo4society.esa.int/projects/waposal/
The WAPOSAL project is producing an innovative application of Earth Observation data. WAPOSAL is creating a state-of-the-art database of wave renewable energy in European coastal zones, marginal territories like archipelagoes, Africa, and the Mediterranean Sea to support the EU Green Transition and make the climate neutral.
The global coverage of the altimetry constellation, the provision of significant wave height measurements, and the capability to estimate wave periods demonstrate that satellite altimeters are valuable systems for assessing the site-specific wave energy potential. WAPOSAL uses a novel methodology to compute wave power density based on a newly produced EO dataset that enables high-resolution multi-mission altimetry data in the coastal zone.
Objectives:
- create a state-of-the-art dataset of average wave power density
- obtain along-track wave period estimates in European coastal zones
- obtain along-track wave power density estimates, its variability, and trends
Satellite altimetry missions have brought a new perspective and paved the way for renewable energy assessment from space. High-resolution SAR altimetry (Altimetry Virtual Lab-AVL) products from the ESA CryoSat-2, Sentinel-3 from the OCRE EO database, and Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich missions, processed with coastal zone algorithms such as SAMOSA+, offer a new opportunity to improve coastal wave energy assessments.
Significant wave height (Hs) and the backscatter coefficient (Sigma0) are directly derived from the OCRE-EO database distributed by the ESA AVL hosted on the EarthConsole® platform (https://earthconsole.eu/virtual-labs/).
Main achievements from Milestone 1:
- The Gommenginger et al. (2003) method was successfully applied to estimate the along-track wave periods needed for the sequel steps.
- The method shows a good correlation for both the significant wave height (Hs) and the wave period (Tz).
- In all regions, a high correlation was found for the Hs and Tz.
- CryoSat-2 and Sentinel-3AB altimeter’s statistical metrics give similar results.