Besides the measurement of ocean surface currents, high-frequency (HF) radar has also been demonstrated to be effective at measuring the wind direction at scales on the order of one to several kilometers and over areas of millions of square kilometers in the case of sky-wave HF radars (Georges et al., 1993) and many hundreds of square kilometers in the case of groundwave HF radars. The capability to estimate the wind direction at high resolution over large areas makes HF radar unique in that it is ground based, yet is capable of collecting remotely sensed measurements of the oceanic wind field that could prove beneficial to mariners, weather forecasters, ocean and atmospheric modelers, offshore operators, and recreational users. Not only are such measurements useful to a variety of people, but they would be expensive and difficult, if not impossible, to obtain through other means, such as through the use of buoys at this resolution.

Fernandez, D.M., H.C. Graber, J.D. Paduan, and D.E. Barrick. 1997. Mapping wind directions with HF radar. Oceanography 10(2):93–95, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1997.33.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.