SCAWVEX
Surface current and wave variability experiment

The SCAWVEX (MAS2-CT94-0103) project, 01/02/95 – 31/01/98

Project coordinator: L. Wyatt, the University of Sheffield

Partners: K-W. Gurgel, Institut fur Meereskunde; K. van Ruiten, RWS-RIKZ; H. E. Krogstad, SINTEF; S. Barstow, Oceanor; D. Prandle, Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory; H. Gerritsen, Delft Hydraulics; G. J. Wensink, Argoss.

About SCAWVEX

This was an EC MAST (Marine Science and Technology Programme) project to study the variability of waves and currents. Central to the project is the use of HF radar to measure waves and currents simultaneously. Also fundamental is the intercomparison of different measurement techniques.

The SCAWVEX project was addressing problems in wave and current development and their interaction in shallow water environments. The primary object was to measure the spatial and temporal variability of waves and currents in coastal regions utilising the full range of state of the art measurement techniques and models.

Three experiments contributed to the programme (see maps below). At Holderness (on the north-east coast of England) the environment is primarily one of fetch-limited wind wave development. Petten (in the Netherlands) is more exposed to west, north westerly storms but with a similar smoothly varying (both parallel and perpendicular to the coast) bathymetry. The Rhine Outflow (also in the Netherlands) provides a contrast (and more of a challenge to some instruments) both in the more complex bathymetric variation and in the volume of shipping.

The Rhine Outflow may impose some limitations on the HF radar measurements since ship echoes (unless anchored) tend to fall in the frequency range containing the wave echoes.

Find out more the project

People

Institutes

Documents

Animations

Analysis and reports

The measurement systems used in these experiments included

HF radar
synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
satellite altimeter
accelerometers
ADCP
current meters
pressure cells
X-band ground-based radar

These systems were being intercompared to identify their strengths and weaknesses and to quantify measurement accuracies. This information is being used in the development of optimisation methodologies to combine measurements and models to give the best estimates of wave and current fields.

Data sets have been prepared for wider use in the modelling community that provide examples of wave transformations in shallow water, time/space scales of wave development and current variability and wave/current/bathymetry interaction. These data sets could be used for other approaches to the measurement/model integration problem perhaps with particular applications in mind.

CD-ROMs

These can be accessed at the University of Hamburg Radar Database. The CD-ROMs include the updated versions of the Maasmond and Petten CD-ROMs and two HF radar current CD-ROMs.