roper description of wind field features in the coastal zone is important for many different practical applications including offshore wind energy resource assessment, ocean and atmosphere modelling and also advancing in the physical understanding of the wind transformations that take place across the water-land boundary. Advantage of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is their ability to resolve small-scale wind field features (with spatial resolution of 150 meters and larger) caused by wind transformation due to abrupt change of the surface roughness and surface temperature at the land-sea transition.
Analysis of wind transformation in the coastal zone of the Gulf of Finlandusing ENVISAT SAR data is presented in this study. In total more than 25 SAR images covering various scenarios of wind field transformations are considered. The data are analyzed using semi-empirical model of the atmospheric boundary layer transformation. Several “typical” cases of wind transformation at various meteorological conditions and the atmospheric stratifications are considered and interpreted. Relevance of observed phenomena to the offshore wind energy resource assessment is shown.