The EnviWave project is a shared-project co-funded by the European Commission within the activities of a generic nature of the Environment and Sustainable Development sub-programme (5th Framework Programme, (EVG1-CT-2001-00051). The project will be lasting 3 years and it started in March 2003.

The main objective of this project is to fully benefit from the use of two instruments onboard the ENVISAT satellite: the Advance Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) and the Radar Altímeter (RA-2). Both devices will serve the user community with meteorological and ocean products extending the quality of previous and existing missions

There are quite a large number of different goals to be aimed in this project. We distinguish between those objectives that result in a direct use of the measurements provided by the instruments and those activities that develop new products and applications by using the data indirectly. The tasks planned in the Enviwave include the following:

•Calibration and validation of the ASAR and RA-2 measurements .

•Development of wind and wave products from the ASAR and RA-2 data, which will be calibrated in real time.

•Acquisition and accumulation in a database of satellite, buoy/platform and model data from different wave climate regions worlwide.

•Development of new data assimilation algorithms in numerical wave models. Special interest lays on the assimilation of the full wave spectrum.

•Testing of the assimilation impact in different climatic sceneries.

•Assessment of the assimilation benefits in nowcasting.

•Improvements in near shore knowledge and coastal predictions.

•Disemination of products and results.

In the line of the general objectives, Puertos del Estado pursues particular interests derived from the Enviwave project. At the end of the three years period the following goals should be achieved:

•An assimilation scheme for satellite data will be implemented and running in the wave forecasting system, which has been developed at Puertos del Estado.

•Providing the wave forecasting system with a buoy data assimilation algorithm. With this new scheme, it is expected an improvement of the boundary conditions that feed the local forecasting applications, which are operating at the harbour locations.

•Extending and updating the data base which already exists at Puertos del Estado with new information supplied by the Envisat satellite.