Water depth and surface current retrievals from airborne optical measurements of surface gravity wave dispersion

Visible images of nearshore ocean waves obtained from an aircraft have been utilized to estimate the surface currents and water depth below the waves. A digital framing camera was mounted in a motion-stabilized turret and used to obtain temporal sequences of high-quality optical images of shoaling ocean waves. Data on the position and attitude of the camera/turret were used to map the image data to a rectilinear coordinate system at the level of the surface, effectively separating the spatial and temporal modulations due to the waves. The resulting three-dimensional (3-D) space-time data sets were Fourier transformed to obtain frequency-wave number spectra of these modulations. These spectra contain information on the propagation characteristics of the waves, such as their wavelengths and frequencies, and their directions and speeds of propagation. The water depth and current vector have been estimated by choosing these parameters so that a “best” fit is obtained between the theoretical dispersion relation for linear gravity waves and these 3-D wave spectra. Image data sets were acquired during the Shoaling Waves Experiment (SHOWEX) along the quasi-linear coastline in the vicinity of the Army Corps of Engineers' Field Research Facility (FRF) near Duck on the North Carolina Outer Banks. Summary wave parameters and bathymetry and current retrievals are typically within 10% of contemporaneous in situ measurements, though outliers occur.