We are developing a suit of regional-to-local scale wave models for ROXSI using the COAWST modeling system. One such product is our nowcast wave model using a series of three nested SWAN grids with successively higher resolution. 

In its current incarnation, every 4 hours we initialize a model with the latest hourly bulk wave spectral characteristics in the region available from real-time offshore CDIP (yellow dot) and NOAA NDBC (green dot) buoy data. This information is applied as boundary conditions on our lowest-resolution SWAN grid (500-m resolution, the extent of the picture shown here) with 2 additional SWAN models (100-m and 20-m resolution, dashed and red boxes, respectively) nested within and run in parallel.

Nowcast results are posted internally to the ROXSI team to plan field and remote sensing operations (see this page for our latest nowcast). Below are two examples of drastically different regional wave conditions from the last several weeks near the experiment site have been modeled on a local scale. High energy NW waves with relatively high period are in contrast with recent lower energy SW waves at low period. In a future post, we will explore the effects of spectral boundary conditions as well as some model-data comparisons to this nowcast. Watch this space.