
Francisco J Ocampo TorresCenter for Scientific Research and Higher Education at Ensenada | CICESE · Department of Physical Oceanography
Francisco J Ocampo Torres
PhD
Research Scientist.
Consultant and Science Advisor
About
96
Publications
30,139
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,780
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
September 1989 - June 2021
Publications
Publications (96)
Correctly estimating the wind stress at the sea surface is of the utmost importance in models for climate studies, weather forecasting, and ocean–atmosphere interaction. The wind stress is mainly obtained by drag coefficient parameterizations, which always consider the wind stress to be aligned with the wind, but this is sometimes the case. Also, d...
Wave energy converters (WECs) with multiple degrees of freedom based on the concept of parallel manipulators are promising devices to increase power generation. In recently published research, WECs based on parallel mechanisms were studied and showed higher output power than traditional devices. Therefore, this paper introduces the concept of the s...
This paper studies the error that occurs when measuring surface currents with a current meter mounted on a buoy or a mooring line whose horizontal and vertical motions respond to the presence of waves. The error is defined with respect to an Eulerian reference measurement where the sensor does not move. First, we present the subject with a theoreti...
GlobCurrent provides a variety of datasets aiming to describe global ocean circulation, especially when dealing with large-scale phenomena. It includes surface Stokes drift and geostrophic, Ekman, and total (geostrophic plus Ekman) currents. GlobCurrent uses the CNES-CLS13 mean dynamic topography estimation as well as data from sea surface drifters...
The tragic accident of the Macondo platform operated by British Petroleum (BP) unleashed in 2010 one of the largest oil spills in history, lasting over three months, spilling nearly 500 million liters of oil in one of the most biodiverse ocean regions. This accident revealed the technological deficiencies for the control of a spill in deep waters o...
The impact of the high space-temporal variability of the wind field during the moderate and intense storm stages of a tropical cyclone on the wave field as computed by the numerical model WaveWatch III is investigated in this work. The realistic wind fields are generated by a high-resolution implementation of the HWRF model in the Gulf of Mexico an...
One of the major threats to marine ecosystems is pollution, particularly, that associated with the offshore oil and gas industry. Oil spills occur in the world's oceans every day, either as large-scale spews from drilling-rig or tanker accidents, or as smaller discharges from all sorts of sea-going vessels. In order to contribute to the timely dete...
The turbulent kinetic energy dissipation is an essential quantity in the study of turbulence in fluids. In particular, on the transference of turbulent energy from large to small scales and determining its state of equilibrium and stationarity. This work has the purpose of understanding turbulence generation by non-breaking waves from turbulent kin...
The relevance of ocean surface wave dynamics is briefly reviewed. Some aspects are acknowledged from the traditional point of view, regarding mainly coastal and oceanic engineering applications, ship design, as well as maritime operations. More recently, interest is well focused at the exchange processes between the ocean and the atmosphere, to dea...
A comprehensive analysis of the wavefield evolution under accelerated wind conditions provides an essential contribution to understanding the wind-wave generation process. A set of experiments was carried out in a large wind-wave facility where it is possible to reproduce high wind speed conditions to study the wind acceleration effect in the wind-...
This paper presents a data acquisition and telemetry system designed and built to monitor oceanographic and meteorological parameters. A voltage regulator and readout module was designed for the reading of data from a set of dedicated commercial sensors and to continuously monitor the voltage level of the power supply. In order to monitor the measu...
A single-body point absorber system is analysed to improve its power absorption at a finite water depth. The proposed wave energy converter consists of a single floating body coupled to a direct-drive power take-off system placed on the seabed. The structure of a cylindrical buoy with large draft is changed by a single body composed of three struct...
This paper presents an arrangement of sub-surface fixed horizontal plates as an alternative to single long plates and conventional breakwaters. Through experimental tests in a wave flume, their capability as coastal protection elements was evaluated varying the number of plates and their spacing, as well as the roughness of their crowns by means of...
Sea surface roughness is affected by surface current gradients, which provides a means of monitoring from satellite sharp oceanic fronts. This paper is the second report of an experiment designed to compare observations of sea surface roughness and surface currents at an unprecedented accuracy, owing to the conjunction of numerous deployed drifters...
Hurricane Wilma was the most extreme hydro-meteorological event ever to occur in the Caribbean Sea. During its occurrence, the sea surface elevation was recorded close to Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The equipment used which features both, acoustical and pressure sensors to measure the water depth, was deployed approximately at a depth of...
High-resolution satellite images of ocean color and sea surface temperature reveal an abundance of ocean fronts, vortices and filaments at scales below 10 km but measurements of ocean surface dynamics at these scales are rare. There is increasing recognition of the role played by small scale ocean processes in ocean-atmosphere coupling, upper-ocean...
A novel wave energy converter (WEC) design, based on the concept of the Stewart-Gough platform (SGP) is being investigated. The main objectives of this study are to present the proposed WEC based on the SGP (WEC-SGP) and to establish the necessary equations to describe the motion of the SGP to be used as a WEC. A kinematic analysis is developed to...
Ocean-atmosphere exchange processes are known to decisively determine the sea state, the weather and our planet’s climate. With the ultimate goal of a better understanding of the processes contributing with turbulent kinetic energy into both boundary layers above and below the sea surface, we approach the ocean surface wave phenomenon, and in parti...
High-resolution satellite images of the ocean surface in and around the sunglint often provide unique observations of sub-mesoscale upper ocean surface processes. Local anomalies of wind, waves, currents or surfactants appear on the images as local anomalies of brightness. A quantitative interpretation of those brightness anomalies must relate them...
Although ocean surface waves are known to play an important role in the momentum and other scalar transfer between the atmosphere and the ocean, most operational numerical models do not explicitly include the terms of wave-current interaction. In this work, a numerical analysis about the relative importance of the processes associated with the wave...
The influence of wave-associated parameters controlling turbulent CO2 fluxes through the air–sea interface is investigated in a coastal region. A full year of high-quality data of direct estimates of air–sea CO2 fluxes based on eddy-covariance measurements is presented. The study area located in Todos Santos Bay, Baja California, Mexico, is a net s...
Directional wave spectra acquired in hurricane reconnaissance missions are compared with wind-wave spectral models. The comparison result is quantified with two indices of model-measurement spectral agreement. In the main region of hurricane coverage, the indices vary sinusoidally with the azimuth angle referenced to the hurricane heading while sho...
The lack of fresh water is an increasing worldwide problem caused by the over exploitation and pollution of aquifers and water reserves by anthropogenic activities. In coastal regions, desalination can be used to turn seawater into a new source of fresh water. The aim of this paper is to describe the first stages of development of a Wave Energy Con...
Note: Please feel free to access the paper at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1VKEX6nh6k~fs The link will work until August 23, 2017.
Rubble-mound breakwaters are widely used for beach protection and generate shelter zones in the water, although their feasibility diminishes as water depth increases, due mainly to construction costs. In this paper a...
The influence of wave-associated parameters controlling turbulent CO2 fluxes through the air-sea water interface is evaluated in a coastal region. The study area, located within the Todos Santos Bay, Baja California, México, was found to be a weak sink of CO2 with a mean flux of -1.32 µmol m-2s-1. The low correlation found between flux and wind spe...
Automatic cleaning system for optimizing the optical of the infrared gas analyzer IRGA - LI7500
El LI-7500A es un analizador de CO2 / H2O, de trayectoria abierta, alta velocidad y alta precisión diseñado principalmente para mediciones en ambientes terrestres y es comúnmente utilizado, junto a un anemómetro sónico, para la estimación de flujo de gases por el método de correlación turbulenta.
La implementación del analizador en ambientes marino...
El LI-7500A es un analizador de CO2 / H2O, de trayectoria abierta, alta velocidad y alta precisión
diseñado principalmente para mediciones en ambientes terrestres y es comúnmente utilizado, junto a un
anemómetro sónico, para la estimación de flujo de gases por el método de correlación turbulenta.
La implementación del analizador en ambientes marino...
The Wave Energy Converter (WEC) described in this document is based on the Stewart-Gough Platform (SGP) concept, which allows the use of six degrees of freedom of motion for maximum exploitation of available energy in the wave front. The first stage of the project was focused in testing numerically the WEC’s hydrodynamic behaviour when interacting...
The relevance of this challenging still unresolved development of multi-band equatorially orbiting fully polarimetric POLinSAR satellite configurations to the entire terrestrial globe will be highlighted. Special attention will be given to generation of global weather phenomena, supply of an ever more relevant stable food base, extraction of minera...
In a previous study it was found that airborne and buoy-based measurements of wind stress made in the Gulf of Tehuantepc, México failed to agree. Here we revisit the issue and analyze data from both platforms in the context of flux-sampling strategies and find that there is now good agreement between wind-stress estimates from both experiments. The...
Ocean surface drift is of great relevance to properly model exchange processes between the ocean and the
atmosphere. It is also important to better understand the early stages of surface waves development and their
implications in the momentum transfer across the sea surface. In this work we study the the onset of surface drift induced by wind and...
Se utilizó un modelo numérico para estudiar la interacción de
oleaje irregular con estructuras rectangulares sumergidas, fijas
a cierta distancia por encima del fondo marino. Se llevó a cabo una
serie de experimentos variando cinco parámetros adimensionales
relevantes en el proceso de interacción: la razón entre la profundi-
dad local y la longitud...
The spatial structure of the wave field during hurricane conditions is studied using the National Data Buoy Center directional wave buoy data set from the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. The buoy information, comprising the directional wave spectra during the passage of several hurricanes, was referenced to the center of the hurricane using t...
Observations of coastal-trapped waves (CTW) are limited by instrumentation technologies, and temporal and spatial resolutions; hence their complete description is still limited. In the present work we used measurements from high frequency radio scatterometers (HFR) to analyze the subinertial dynamics of the Gulf of Tehuantepec in the Mexican Pacifi...
Fetch-limited wave growth was analyzed using high spatial and temporal resolution measurements obtained with high-frequency
(HF) radars. To calculate the wave spectrum, the second-order echo (S2N) was extracted from the Doppler spectrum and mapped to the wave
frequency domain. The conversion of S2N to the wave frequency spectrum was carried out usi...
Ocean surface drift is of great relevance to properly model wind waves and specially the early stages of surface waves development and ocean-atmosphere fluxes during incipient wind events and storms. In particular, wave models are not so accurate predicting wave behaviour at short fetches, where wind drift onset might be very important. The onset o...
TOPMEX-9 is put forward in this paper, advancing a mission for the Earth
Observation Programme of the Mexican Space Agency, a distributed
Micro-SAR concept within a Master and Slaves flight formation.
International collaboration is essential and a start project is being
developed between the Microwaves and Radar Institute of the German
Aerospace Ce...
In this research a comparison between two of the most popular ocean wave models, WAVEWATCH III ™ and SWAN, was performed using data from hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico. The numerical simulation of sea surface directional wave spectrum and other wave parameters for several parameter-izations and its relation with the drag coefficient was ca...
The possible influence of accelerated winds on air-water momentum fluxes is being studied through detailed laboratory measurements in a large wind-wave flume. Wind stress over the water surface, waves and surface drift are measured in the 40m long wind-wave tank at IRPHE, Marseille. While momentum fluxes are estimated directly through the eddy corr...
In an earlier paper by Wang and Hwang, a wave steepness method was introduced to separate the wind sea and swell of the 1D wave spectrum without relying on external information, such as the wind speed. Later, the method was found to produce the unreasonable result of placing the swell–sea separation frequency higher than the wind sea peak frequency...
This paper presents the strategy for the development of TOPMEX-9, an innovative concept for Earth observation based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and nanosatellite clusters. The concept is intended as a, as a start up project for future collaboration between the Microwaves and Radar Institute (HR) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Mexic...
: An analysis of the performance of parameterizations for the drag coefficient C D over the ocean is presented. The results were obtained by considering detailed observations from the recent IntOA experiment in which a co-existence of wind sea and swell provides characteristic mixed sea conditions in a wide range of wind speeds. Recent research has...
Wind stress over the ocean depends on the sea surface roughness which is
determined by the sea state. On one hand, underdeveloped wind seas,
rougher than their fully developed counterpart, increase the drag. On
the other hand, the presence of swell can modify wind stress by
modifying the wind sea roughness. This latter mechanism is believed to
have...
The possible influence of swell on wind-sea development and on air-sea
momentum fluxes have motivated us to further analyse the measurements
obtained during the intOA Experiment, a Gulf of Tehuantepec field
campaign in early 2005. Hindcasting of directional wave spectrum is
performed in order to elucidate on the relative importance of the source
fu...
Following a 2005 field campaign to study the possible influence of swell
on wind-sea development and on air-sea momentum fluxes, it has been
demonstrated some reduction of the wind stress due to the presence of
long swell in the opposite direction, in particular during moderate to
strong winds. Further field measurements, numerical simulation and
l...
A numerical experiment has been carried out in order to study the
structure of the wave field during hurricane conditions. High resolution
wind data for a hurricane were obtained by the use of a Holland type
asymmetric model. The third generation wind-wave model SWAN has been
used in this study. A reference framework for the structure of the wave
f...
Momentum fluxes were determined directly through detailed measurements
of wind velocity and the eddy correlation method, during a field
experiment in the Gulf of Tehuantepec, Mexico. The study site can be
considered as a natural laboratory for its sudden offshore winds with a
definite direction and the rather persistent presence of opposing swell....
A numerical wave model (CADMAS-SURF) was used to estimate regular wave transmission and reflection from a fixed squared submerged structure placed at a distance above the seabed. A series of numerical experiments were performed varying relevant non-dimensional parameters such as ratio of water depth to wavelength, wave steepness, ratio of incident...
Theoretical study and experimental verification of wind wave generation and evolution focus generally on ideal conditions of steady state and quiescent initial background, of which the ideal fetch-limited wind wave growth is an important benchmark. In nature, unsteady winds and swell presence are more common. Here, the observations of wind wave dev...
Models that obtain wave information from high frequency radars (HF) use
information of the measured second order Doppler spectrum. The
estimation is completed through an integral equation as in the case of
the Barrick model, or linearly as in the Hasselmann model. For the
latter, the linear form uses a parameter (α) obtained using an
exclusive set...
Generation and propagation of coastally trapped waves (CTW) is a well
studied process. However, CTW observations are limited by
instrumentation technologies and time-spatial resolution, hence its
complete understanding still limited. In this work we use High-Frequency
Radars (HFR) measurements to analyze the sub-inertial dynamics over the
Gulf of T...
Applying wavelength scaling, dimensionally consistent expressions of the ocean surface friction coefficient can be developed for both wind sea and mixed sea in the ocean. For a wind sea with a monopeak wave spectrum, the natural choice of the scaling wavelength is that of the spectral peak component. For a mixed sea with a multipeak spectrum, the p...
The Gulf of Tehuantepec air–sea interaction experiment (intOA) took place from February to April 2005, under the Programme for the Study of the Gulf of Tehuantepec (PEGoT, Spanish acronym
for Programa para el Estudio del Golfo de Tehuantepec). PEGoT is underway aiming for better knowledge of the effect of strong
and persistent offshore winds on coa...
El presente estudio pretende determinar la exactitud de las predicciones de oleaje en condiciones de fetch limitado usando el código SWAN de alta resolución en la costa catalana. Para ello se han usado registros de oleaje obtenidos durante la campaña RIMA-Med. En esta campaña se instrumentó una zona costera no mareal durante otoño-invierno 2007. La...
High-resolution TerraSAR-X images are analysed for the first time to investigate the effects of gap winds on the sea surface off the south Pacific Coast of Mexico. StripMap and ScanSAR scenes were acquired over the Gulf of Tehuantepec on March 2008, coinciding with a strong Tehuano event with a wind speed of about 24 ms-1. Although spatial variabil...
Direct measurements of the momentum exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere were acquired from a spar buoy under conditions of mixed wind-sea and swell. In this particular experimental site, offshore winds generally occurring during winter season generate waves locally opposing the swell arriving from distant storms in the southern Pacific an...
Wind stress is a key parameter for oceanic and atmospheric modeling,
forecasting, and hydrodynamic studies. It is generally accepted that
wind stress depends on the sea state. In particular, it has been shown
that the presence of swell can modify both magnitude and direction of
the wind stress. The presence of swell enhances momentum flux when swel...
In this paper, different partitioning techniques and methods to identify wind sea and swell are investigated, addressing both 1D and 2D schemes. Current partitioning techniques depend largely on arbitrary parameterizations to assess if wave systems are significant or spurious. This makes the implementation of automated procedures difficult, if not...
Computer simulations of wave and current fields in the southern North Sea were made with a coupled-models system to study the influence of wave–current interactions on the bottom-shear stress in coastal waters. A third-generation wave-spectral model is coupled with a tide-surge model, which provides current and water level information to take into...
Detailed measurements of the wave field allowed us to determine the ocean surface wave spectrum in the Gulf of Tehuantepec, Mexico. During a field campaign in early 2005, three ADCPs were deployed near the coast to measure the wave field, in addition, an air-sea interaction spar (ASIS) buoy was in operation for about two months to measure the momen...
For a period of 22months beginning in September 2003, an array of four current profilers were deployed on the Puerto Morelos
fringing reef lagoon, a microtidal Caribbean environment characterised by the influence of the Yucatan Current (YC) and a
Trade Wind regime. The dataset includes water currents, bottom pressure, and surface waves complemented...
The North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME) is an internationally
coordinated process study aimed at determining the sources and limits of
predictability of warm-season precipitation over North America. The
scientific objectives of NAME are to promote a better understanding and
more realistic simulation of warm-season convective processes in compl...
This document presents a strategic overview of modeling and related data analysis and assimilation components of the North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME). Building on the NAME science plan, a strategy is outlined for accelerating progress on the fundamental modeling issues pertaining to NAME science goals. The strategy takes advantage of NAME e...
We investigated the effect of the daily sea breeze on the surface flow at Bahia Salsipuedes, Baja California, Mexico. Drifter-tracking experiments were conducted over a 2-week period in July, 1999. Surface drifters were deployed daily and their trajectories tracked from a small boat for 3–7 h. Wind speed and direction, as well as the vertical distr...
Copyright 2004 by the American Geophysical Union Mean fields, seasonal cycles, and interannual variability are examined for fields of satellite-derived chlorophyll pigment concentrations (CHL), sea surface height (SSH), and sea surface temperature (SST) during 1997–2002. The analyses help to identify three dynamic regions: an upwelling zone next to...
The influence of longer (swell) on shorter, wind sea waves is examined using an extensive database of directional buoy measurements obtained from a heave-pitch-roll buoy moored in deep water in the South Atlantic. This data set is unique for such an investigation due to the ubiquitous presence of a young swell component propagating closely in direc...
A overview of the ocean wave measurements by using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) from space is presented. SAR yields high resolution two-dimensional images of the radar backscatter properties of the sea surface and can thus be used to measure wind fields and sea state from space. SAR images help to derive new concepts of the sea surface, the devel...
A simple recursive algorithm for the estimation of the friction velocity as a function of the air-sea temperature difference and the wind speed measured at 10-m height above the sea surface, without needing of drag coefficient, is presented. Numerical results are discussed in terms of atmospheric stability and compared to historical records of sea...