Abstract
A natural laboratory in the coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean in the Northwest of Mexico is being implemented (Natural Laboratory in Todos Santos Bay, Mexico) since the beginning of CEMIE-Oceano in 2017. The main objective is to provide a coastal region with specialized sensors to readily monitor the wave field and the most relevant environmental (and oceanographic) variables for future performance analysis and studies of ocean energy conversion devices. BTS coastal region was selected to build the natural laboratory, since the wave power was promising resources for future harvesting. Some details of spatial and temporal variability of the wave field are presented in this work, taking into consideration the advantages of the various measuring systems which properly combined they certainly provide a relatively fine both, spatial and temporal resolution.
A. In-situ sensors
The combination of measuring systems includes in-situ sensors, such as Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCP) and oceanographic buoys (BOC –Coastal Oceanographic Buoys, and BOMM –Oceanography and Marine Meteorology Buoys, for their Spanish definition).
B. Remote sensors
Besides in-situ sensors, ocean surface images have been obtained from space borne synthetic aperture radars operating from ESA (Sentinel 1) and DLR (TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X) satellites. Furthermore, remote sensors (X-band and High Frequency radars) are also deployed in the coast and results of the wave field retrieval are shown. In particular, high frequency (HF) radar is used to estimate the wave height and the description of the spatial variations are provided with maps of the significant wave height as obtained every hour.