BORA IN THE ADRIATIC SEA AND BLACK SEA IMAGED BY THE ENVISAT SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR

Bora events over the Adriatic Sea and Black Sea are investigated by using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images acquired by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) onboard the European Envisat satellite. These images show pronounced elongated patterns of increased sea surface roughness caused by bora winds. The comparison of the SAR images with wind fields derived from Quikscat data confirms that in all cases a strong northeasterly wind was blowing from the mountains onto the sea. It is shown that the SAR images reveal details of the spatial extent of the bora wind fields over the sea which cannot be obtained by other instruments. Furtheremore, also quantitative information on the wind field is extracted from the SAR images by using a wind scatterometer model.