Surface-current variability statistics in the tidally dominated San Francisco Bay

Abstract

Drifter deployments were performed in the Central San Francisco Bay in order to evaluate performance of the high-resolution High-Frequency (HF) radars that are deployed there. The field study was designed to obtain drifter measurements in the radar coverage areas for comparison between the two measurements. Drifter radial velocities were computed along with statistics on surface-current subgrid-scale variability in the deployment areas. Removing the variability of the strong surface-currents from the estimate of instrument error gives a precise estimate of HF radar error in San Francisco Bay. An overall value of 8.45 cm/s for radar error is obtained by the comparison between surface drifters and the radar.